


Three Thieves

by TheYsabet



Category: Magic Kaitou, Meitantei Conan | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Angst and Humor, F/M, M/M, Magic, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-07 05:38:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 195,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/427493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheYsabet/pseuds/TheYsabet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All things can change:  relationships, self-definition, friendships, boundaries, anything.  When circumstances bring Edogawa Conan and the Kaitou Kid into a situation where friendship is more than just a possibility, change brings them-- and Mouri Ran-- closer than they could ever have dreamed... much to the detriment of the Black Organization's plans.  Warnings for eventual mature situations, explicit m/m/f pairings and brain-breakage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "Feather, Ruse, Father Brown"

**Author's Note:**

> This extremely long work (broken up into books, of which there are seven so far) is currently being posted both on Livejournal and on Fanfiction.net, but a good friend requested that I try it out here. And, as I love this site and frequently go fishing here, I decided that I would. ^_^ The story was originally being co-authored by myself and another writer, nightingale, but she has since dropped out and from Book Seven/Chapter Four (toldja it was long) is being written entirely by moi, TheYsabet. 
> 
> Lengths are as follows (and no bad jokes, I can HEAR you from here):  
> BOOK ONE - 8 chapters  
> BOOK TWO - 13 chapters  
> BOOK THREE - 12 chapters  
> BOOK FOUR - 12 chapters  
> BOOK FIVE - 20 chapters  
> BOOK SIX - 23 chapters  
> BOOK SEVEN - Um, working on it... I'm up to chapter 8...  
> After that, who knows? There will also be omakes, but they'll be posted separately.
> 
> (BTW, and it's a BIG BTW: on LJ and ff.net I'm listed as 'Ysabet', but as that was already taken here I've had to modify that a little. C'est la vie. So don't worry, those of you who already know me, I'm still myself!)

**_Chapter One:_** ** _"feather, ruse, Father Brown"_**  
 _theme music:_ ["Spectrum" by DBA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v77fL51hU1A)  
  
* * *  
  
 _A notice has been sent anonymously to the Kaitou Kid, daring him in terms of extreme rudeness to steal a certain gem before it can be stolen by the sender. The notice is pretty clear: a gem-- a perfect piece of red amber shaped like a quail's egg with a tiny feather in its heart, set in a silver pendant-- belongs to the Kikoman family (of the great Kikoman Soy Sauce zaibatsu; *those* Kikoman) and it normally lives in the jewelry box of Kikoman Meiyuko, the matriarch of the family (89 years old and supposedly a very good shot with a handgun). Kikoman-sama has a fondness for dogs, LARGE dogs, and her estate is full of them-- dobermans, mastiffs, rottweilers, you name it; they're everywhere.  
  
It's the middle of summer, horribly hot and everybody's temper is on edge. Mouri and company have been invited to investigate the situation; they're staying at the estate, which is large and hypermodernistic to a ridiculous degree (if there's a gadget, Kikoman-sama or one of her numerous descendants has it. The house is alarmingly automated) and has hideous modern art everywhere. Hakuba's busted his ankle, Heiji AND Kazuha both have the flu (how romantic) and Nakamori's at a seminar in Hokkaido that he very much doesn't want to be at. So it's just Mouri, Ran and Conan... and a piece of amber. And an arrogant, insulting, rude, taunting dare of a robbery-notice.  
  
So: What's the Kaitou Kid going to do about it, hmmm? _  
  
* * *  
  
It was several hours after they'd settled into the Kikoman estate; and Conan Edogawa was, for once, grateful for his transformed state.  He'd been more than a little nervous that he'd end up stuck in a room with Ran (something that'd happened all too often before and was terribly hard on the nerves), but his small suitcase had been borne off by a servant and installed into a room of his own.  A kid's room, granted, but you were supposed to count your blessings, right?  At least it wasn't too cutesy.   
  
And so he sat on the edge of the small European-style bed (one where, for once, his feet actually touched the ground) and went over the points of the estate in his usual mental catalog.  
   
One: well-guarded.  The place had a more-than-decent security system, top of the line-- the Kikoman family didn't stint on the electronics.  
   
Two: way too many damn windows.  Conan sighed.  Even the best security couldn't get around a smash-and-grab.  
   
Three: not enough people around.  A handful of servants, a couple of the older relatives, Kikoman-sama's personal assistant Noyen Iri, himself and Ran and Mouri, and that was it.  
   
...except for Kid, wherever the hell he was.  
  
*  
   
The Kikoman estate boasted an indulgent quantity of old hardwood trees scattered about its grounds, many of which were lit from below by footlights aimed up into their branches.  The others stood in darkened silence, and it was through several of those that Kaitou Kid made his approach, making no more noise than the wind through the leaves.  The scene was eerily quiet, and though the house itself was flooded with lights in all its rooms, there were no exterior floodlights or guards watching the entrances.  Used to the bustle and friendly chaos of the Task Force, Kid clucked softly at the casual mood that he still hadn't been able to shake.  He'd cased the building the previous night, and again during today's afternoon, but still didn't let the confidence he felt about the upcoming heist cloud his knowledge that there were certainly parts of the situation - and security net - that he couldn't predict.   
   
Usually this wasn't even a conscious concern - with the Task Force running things, what unpredictability there was inherent in the gathering of a large group of people, officers or not, was overrun by the overwhelmingly predictable movements of all the Task Force's members and bullhorns, floodlights and helicopters.  The unpredictable factors that mattered were considerably fewer, and much more of a challenge.  They could direct the largely blind and dumb force of Nakamori's men in more effective ways, using the Task Force as an oversized extension of their own wills, and it was they who Kid had come to perform for.  The thrill of wowing the crowd was still there, and always would be, but a more potent satisfaction lay in the chance to outmaneuver those he considered his equals.  
   
Tonight, however, there was only one of them within that house, and he was without the backing of Nakamori's several dozen Task Force members, without the power of the prefectural police, and without the coordinated aid of his peers - small or large.  Kid smiled thinly as he took the final leap that would land him on the roof of the mansion, careful to hold all that he carried up and out of the way to clear the laser motion sensor that trimmed the roof's edge.  Light as cat's paws he touched down, then stripped quickly out of his oversuit of soft black cotton, revealing the white suit beneath.  Pulling the black boot covers off his glossy white shoes, Kid rubbed away a small spot on one toe, settled his hat and monocle carefully in place, and clipped the cape to his shoulders, lacing the tips of the glider frame into their fitted pockets with the speed and ease of long practice.  He folded his black outfit carefully out of the way, in the shadowed lee of the roof where it would be unlikely to be found, and stood.  
   
The wind above the house caught his cape, lifting the military-grade tensile, lightweight fabric easily behind him.  Kid's grin returned, broader and wild, and he bit back a laugh as he walked primly to one end of the roof and deliberately waved the toe of one shoe through the laser tripwire.  Alarms instantly screamed from several places within the house, and Kid tipped his hat before hopping off the roof and snapping open his glider.  It was showtime.  
   
* * *  
   
Several stories below, Conan’s head jerked up at the frantic klaxon-wails that had shattered the silence.  Sharp blue eyes with nothing of a child behind them gleamed; and with a calmness that belied the earshattering alarms going off overhead, he slipped out into the hall and was on his way, small house-slippers noiseless against polished wood.  
   
He had no reason to hurry, after all.  It wasn’t like the Amber Wing was on display anywhere; if Kid wanted it, he had to come and get it, now didn’t he?  No; all the thief had done was present his calling-card.  How very professional of him. Conan smirked a little to himself, pulse thrumming with the eagerness that always lit up like a roman candle during these episodes.  They were *safe*-- the closest thing to play that he had in his detective’s profession.  Nobody got hurt, nothing got damaged (short of a little property and Nakamori’s blood pressure) and the goods, supposing Kid got his way, were always returned. A win/win situation, when you looked at it right; pity it’d taken him so damn long to figure that out.  
   
* * *  
   
The breeze was strong, supporting Kid's glider effortlessly as he circled the Kikoman estate, heading for the front door.  Just in before he reached it he angled down, cutting his speed and altitude, and pulled the glider's nose up sharply when he was just ten feet from the door.  With the wind out of his wings, Kid dropped, landing softly in a half-kneel on Kikoman-sama's well-groomed lawn.  Standing as he collapsed the glider, Kid calmly walked up to the front door and picked the lock.  Another alarm woke up as he pushed the door open without giving the security code, but Kid barely noted it.  "Itadakimasu?" he snickered to himself, slipping into the well-lit corridor silently, the door clicking neatly shut behind him as he slipped down the hallway to the right, headed through the sitting room toward the banquet hall.  
   
 _Right on time,_ thought Conan from his place on the stair landing, belly flat to the floor.  And if he angled just a little, just slightly, he might even be able to get off a shot from his tranq-watch that’d hit home.  Not that it’d do much good; the cape and hat and the folds of the suit made a good enough deterrent that the tiny darts’d be about as much good at this range as spitballs.  
   
Time to bring out the big guns, then.  No use in making this  too easy for Kid.  With no attempt at subtlety he blew as hard as possible through the slim metal whistle that he’d been gripping in his teeth; the tone that emerged was very nearly inaudible to his ears (there was a thin, tiny sound like the scream of a moth) but apparently it was enough to do the trick, if the resulting cascade of barks and the incoming thunder of multiple dog-feet was any indication.  
   
Kikoman-sama LIKED dogs.  Large ones.  
  
At the whistle, Kid bolted, running fast down the hallway and through the sitting room.  In the banquet hall he vaulted onto the long, glossy table, coming to rest in a crouch at the center of it.  Within seconds he was surrounded by a platoon of wildly barking, snapping, and growling dogs, pushing against each other, the chairs, and standing on each others' backs to get at him.  Kid pulled his cape in close, standing to minimize the area of himself that the dogs could reach, and waited.  Just one second more...one more...until the last of the pack was pressed as close as possible to the center of the room, crowded together like very large, very angry sardines.  Then, right on time, the time-release gas capsule that Kid had rolled under the table as he entered the room cracked open, spilling plumes of pink sleeping gas that enveloped the whole dog pack at once.  Some five feet above their head level, Kid delicately covered his nose and mouth with one hand, waiting with patience until the last of the dogs had wobbled to a crouch, then a sleepy slump.  He trotted to the far end of the table, smiling at the 'cute appeal' of two or three dozen large dogs snuggling against each other in a heap, some already beginning to snore.   
   
 _Kudo-kun ought to keep clear of the lingering gas,_ Kid mused, stepping lightly from table to chair to floor, and making his way through the servants' kitchen and out the other end into what appeared to be a smoking room of sorts, walls lined with bookshelves.  
  
'Kudo-kun' was doing just that, actually; the familiar, bitter odor had warned him off fairly quickly; not like his short legs could've been much use in pursuit, but...  He'd grabbed something from his still-unpacked bag back in the room for just this sort of thing, socks or whatever; he wasn't sure, he'd just shoved it into a pocket and now had the soft cloth up to his face in one hand, filtering the drifts of sleep-gas as he breathed shallowly.  
  
No use listening for footsteps; Kid was no amateur.  As the faux gradeschooler edged around the heaps of sleeping canines (and hoped they wouldn't wake up; the majority of them were as tall as he was and had sniffed him in a very unsettling way upon his arrival), Conan moved towards the room's only other exit and considered his options.  
  
Ran and her father were guarding Kikoman-sama's bedroom door; _he'd_ been supposed to be keeping to his room (although he didn't think Ran believed he'd do that for a second); and Kikoman-sama herself had utterly refused to leave the bedroom itself, informing Mouri in no uncertain words that he could, ah, perform a number of acts of dubious merit on himself if he thought she was going anywhere.  
  
Quite a turn of phrase the old lady had, mused the detective, cloth still to his face as he slipped through the servants' kitchen.  But then, she hadn't started out with a zaibatsu; she'd begun life as a housemaid, and one from the lower classes of society at that.  Kikoman Aoi had seen her, fallen in love with her, eloped with her, married her and gotten her pregnant all in the course of a few months' time, all at the tender age of seventeen; he'd been the heir, and the Kikoman clan tended towards tradition-- you didn't just disinherit the jewel of the family (heh) because he'd knocked up a housemaid.  Of course, the marriage had posed a problem...  
  
(Conan glanced around the kitchen, smiling when he saw what he wanted; a few seconds later he gripped his prize tightly in one hand and, very carefully, made his way towards the open door that he could see just beyond the exit.  Some sort of library?)  
  
...but one could get around that, if necessary.  Not that it proved to be; the housemaid turned out to have a brain as well as a body, studying up on the business in a way that a less-practical family would have been horrified by.  However, tradition was tradition; and who kept shop while the men were out handling business abroad?  In the Kikoman family, it was the women; and as it grew from fairly wealthy to staggeringly so, the little housemaid-turned-businesswoman had done very well by herself indeed.  
  
His hands were sweating.  Expecting more gas, sonic grenades, God knew what... Conan peered around the door.  
  
What he found, however, was Kaitou Kid sitting in the open bay window, one knee crossed over the other, an old clothbound book open in one palm.  As Conan entered, Kid looked up, lifting the book to block the parts of his face that the monocle didn't cover, and nodded to Conan in greeting.  Then he placed the book, open and facedown, on the windowseat beside him, braced both hands on the window frame behind himself, and slithered backwards out the window, dropping out of sight.  Even if Conan leaned out the window to look, he wouldn't see anything - the bushes below and the yard beyond were equally dark and undisturbed, silently absorbing the continuing klaxons of alarm.  
  
The boy muttered something beyond the vocabulary of most gradeschoolers and, hopefully, most adults; picking up the book, he couldn't help but crane his head the window.  Nothing; leaves and branches and not a flicker of white anywhere, not that he'd expected to see anything.  _Trust Kid to play Jack-in-the-Box,_ he thought irritably, and then bit back a laugh as much as himself as anything.  If this was a game for him, then it had to be doubly so for the thief.   
  
The book was _Detection By Gaslight_ ; the story it lay open to was _'The Eye Of Apollo'_ , not one he was familiar with; and Conan sighed.  Was he supposed to take time out to read it or what?  Kid was increasingly moving into a position of control, which was... not surprising; it fit his usual pattern of behavior.  
  
Well, eventually he'd end up where the Amber Wing was, no matter what route he took.  Trying to walk and read at the same time, Conan headed towards their mutual goal.

 

* * *  
  
 _Father Brown, Father Brown,_ Kid singsonged to himself as he scaled the exterior wall of the mansion, heading up and over the roof to the far side of the building.  It was by some scales, particularly the ones Kid employed, the shortest distance between the first-floor library and Kikoman-sama's third-floor bedroom, and the path had the added advantage of neatly keeping Kid outside the range of surveillance for the evening.  With no exterior guards, Kid was free to move about the outside of the house as he pleased.  If he hadn't already pegged Kikoman-sama's method of guarding the Amber Wing from her profile, this would have given it away.  None of those inside the house were worried about Kid proceeding in an _unsupervised_ manner to a holding point that they could not see.  The jewel was certainly in their active possession at this very moment, which meant that everyone in the house that he had to worry about - now that the dogs were taken care of - was likely to be in one location.  
  
Rappelling the short distance from rooftop to window ledge of Kikoman-sama's large bedroom, Kid peered in the window coyly, grinning through the glass at the woman's proud shoulders as she sat guarding her treasure.

  
  
 _Father Brown, Father Brown, do you stare at the sun?_ Kid hummed, pulling himself out of view of the window again.  As he tucked himself back up to the roof, Kid set a small listening bug against the glass of the window, affixed with light adhesive.  Since the alarms were finally off - either they'd timed out or someone had mercifully taken note of the fact that nobody in the vicinity needed additional warning of the events taking place - Kid felt confident as he settled in to listen, waiting for the approach of his favorite detective.  
   
*  
  
The story was, in an anachronistic way, very clever.  Father Brown had quite an eye for the tiny warping of _wrong_ in the bland flow of the obvious; the man didn't miss a thing, and as he hurried down one hallway and turned down another, Conan wondered a little sardonically if he was supposed to consider himself flattered by the fact that Kid apparently liked to read detective stories.  He supposed it was a lot like a bored housewife indulging in risque romance novels, or maybe more like 9-to-5 officeworkers reading fantasy-based manga on the train home.  It wasn't as if Kid could identify with the pursuit of justice, could he?  
  
Of course not.  And Conan was just your average gradeschooler with a head full of manga and a crush on Ayumi.  Riiiight.  
  
Mouri was just around the corner, talking to one of the few servants that Kikoman-sama had allowed to remain in the house; his voice was, for once, businesslike and terse-- he seemed to be worried about the one other door to the bedroom, the one that opened through the matriarch's maidservant's quarters.  It _was_ locked; still, a weak point was a weak point.  Lingering at the corner, Conan placed the book carefully on the hardwood floor and paused to think for a few minutes before choosing which way to go.  
  
*  
  
On the roof, Kid shifted position carefully, tapping the earbud of his listening device more snugly into his ear.  Over the quiet hum of static on the line, Kid could just barely make out the rumble of discussion outside the bedroom suite. _That would be the Sleeping Detective,_ Kid smiled to himself, noting and then dismissing that frequency as white noise.  Next, he picked up the hum of air-conditioning ducts, running quietly but steadily.  Beyond that, nothing: all was still and quiet in the bedroom suite.  
  
 _Come on in and play, little detective,_ Kid wished.  The eager thrum of heist energy circled his bloodstream like kinetic energy waiting to be released.  Kid held himself still, blocking the urge for motion and theatrics, with barely a conscious thought.  It wasn't time yet to play his hand.  
  
*  
  
 _...aaand easy, and twist, and-- last tumbler, there. Hah._   Conan turned the knob to the maidservant's room with commendable silence, smirking ever so slightly; Kid wasn't the only person who could pick locks.  Sometimes he-- Shinichi-he, not Conan-he-- wondered just how much of an edge he'd gained from his father's rather unconventional lessons in odd things of that sort during his early adolescence; someday he'd have to thank him.  Or maybe not; knowing Kudo Senior, he'd probably stick his son somewhere in one of his Night Baron mysteries.  _Thanks, no,_ thought his unfortunate offspring, and opened the door.  
  
The room was small but nicely laid out, with cabinets and a walk-through closet and dressing-room of unspeakable proportions extending towards a second door; presumably that one led into Kikoman-sama's bedroom, which was situated at one corner of the large mansion.  Conan eased the door shut behind him, listening hard even as he took in the more unusual details of the maidservant's quarters, of which there were several.   
  
There was an amazing amount of... well... he blinked.  What the hell--?  Rather cautiously he approached the collection of devices stored away on open shelves beside a sturdy ironing board.  That one, he supposed, was some sort of garment-steamer; and that was a rather oddly-shaped iron, and that was-- he had absolutely no idea what that was, but it looked lethal and probably imported.  And there were other things: implements for hair, curling irons and flatteners and crimpers and--  Conan glanced at the long row of wigs that lined one shelf, eyebrows climbing towards his own hairline.  
  
Kikoman-sama was how old?  Eighty-nine?  Apparently she wasn't giving in to age without a fight.  
  
Beyond the door there was a commotion of sound: three voices, two male and one female.  The faux gradeschooler held his breath, listening: he knew them-- Kikoman-sama, her assistant Noyen Iri and her nephew, Kikoman Sou.  All three sounded agitated. _Now_ what?  
  
 "You can't sit here all night, obasan!"  
  
"Well, no, I'll have to go to the bathroom at some point."  
  
A groan.  "Not what I meant.  He's going to figure out where you are if you --"  
  
"Oh, I _intend_ him to know exactly where I am," returned the second voice, self-assured and more than a little smug.  "I'm much safer if I wait for him to come to me."  
  
" _Your_ safety isn't really under consideration, obasan, the--"  
  
"That is enough, young master."  
  
"Oh, come on, Kid's not going to--"  
  
"Accidents happen, and I will not allow your arrogance - and madame, with respect, nor yours - to let an accident happen to Kikoman-sama.  We are perfectly safe within this room, and Kikoman-sama is correct, it is much more risky to go wandering around the house looking for a dalliant lunatic in a white suit."  
  
"Darling, as...bluntly...as Noyen has put it, he's still quite right.  If this thief is any sort of a gentleman, he'd at least show up when he said he would!  I'm not about to go running around _looking_ for him to save him from being late."  
  
"And indeed you shouldn't have to, madame," purred a fourth voice, just preceding the hiss and snap of an exploding smoke bomb, clearly audible through the maidservant's door.  
  
 _Now how the hell did he get i-- Never mind._   Conan cursed silently to himself; not that things were going badly exactly, no... but he--  
  
He could open the door if he wanted.  Except that if he did, he'd screw up the whole setup, Kid'd take off like some sort of formally-dressed bat out of Hell, and the whole damn plan'd go down the toilet.  So he'd just sit tight and hope he didn't--  
  
"Don't you dare come another step closer, I'm warning you!" said Mouri Ran in outrage.  
  
\--didn't hear a fifth voice in the room, the one that should've been outside with Mouri.  Conan screwed his eyes shut, sighed, and mentally waved goodbye to the aforementioned plan.  _Well, so much for that._  
  
Within Kikoman-sama's bedroom, Kaitou Kid let his smile touch the corners of his eyes as he executed a shallow bow for his newest challenger.  Standing on the bed only a foot away from Kikoman-sama's head and shoulders, a scant yard from the jewel box that lay in her lap, still clutched tight in her hands even as she lay drugged, Kid straightened from his bow and carefully took a step backwards, edging away from both the unconscious magnate and the very conscious, very angry young girl at the foot of the bed, currently threatening him with her glare and her posture.  
  
Careful of his unsteady footing, Kid backed to the edge of the mattress, then hopped down onto solid ground, hands up in the air to show no harm as he moved.   Once grounded, he tipped his head so the light reflected off his monocle, and flashed Ran a smile.    
  
"Good evening, Mouri-san," he said, slowly beginning to move to his left, toward the foot end of the bed, a path that would eventually put him and Ran next to each other without the bed in the way.  But his movement also put the bed between him and the window, a fact that he didn't seem bothered by as he approached open-handed and with loose, confident stride.  
   
"I'm very sorry to have had to send off our hosts here," Kid told Ran conversationally as he approached.  Wary, she backed from him as he approached, keeping him outside her personal space - and at the right range for a good kick to the head (or groin).  Unconcerned, Kid continued speaking, but came to a stop at the center of the foot end of the bed.  "But it's so distressing to have angry people around me while I work.  I hope you can understand?"  
  
"Oh, sure."  Eyes blazing, the young woman let her body drop just a little, joints loosening and flexing, hands up and ready to strike if possible.  "I understand you're a big enough bully that the first person you pick on is an old woman!"  The assistant Noyen had gotten a breath or two of the sedative-smoke; he was supporting himself against the wall several feet away and in no shape to be of any help.  The nephew, on the other hand, had slumped beside Kikoman-sama's bed and sprawled half on it, apparently unconscious.  
  
Mouri Ran edged a little sideways, wary and undoubtedly nervous; she'd covered her face instinctively as soon as she'd realized what was happening.  And now, very aware that she was the only truly conscious adversary that Kid had, she swallowed hard and moved slowly away from the main door and towards the smaller one, the one to the maidservant's room.  If she could just get the thief to grab his prize and exit into the main part of the house--  
  
On the other side of the smaller door, Conan bit back a groan and listened intently.  He was just the right height to peer through the keyhole...  
  
 _Bully_? Kid's grin shifted downgear into something more irritated and less playful, and he moved swiftly toward Ran, darting toward her personal space with a snarl on his face.  A scant handful of inches from her punching range, he planted his leading foot, shifted his weight to his other hip, and threw his trajectory sharply to the right, toward the wall with the window.  With the moonlight at his back, he felt better, and could settle the unreasonable anger in his gut at Ran's comments.  
  
" _Bullying_?  Is that what you think of my games, Mouri-san?" Kid's voice was a quiet purr just a few shades off of a growl, and one hand rested under his suit jacket on the handle of his card gun, weighing the value of bringing it out.  He didn't know Mouri Ran-san personally, but to make an enemy of her - well, a personal enemy, rather than enemies of just-business - would sour the rivalry between himself and Edogawa.  The prospect was distasteful at best.  He needed Edogawa - as a rival, as an equal, as a resource, and as a challenge - far too much to risk their relationship by insulting Edogawa's girlfriend.  
   
Now there was an interesting image, Kid thought to himself, distracted from his emnity with the comical image of Edogawa holding a door open or pulling out a chair for Mouri-san.  _And he_ _would,_ _too,_ Kid thought to himself.  Snickering, then giggling, he felt the moment of true bad blood passing, and his features smoothed out as he let himself indulge in a giggle at Edogawa's expense, keeping only half an eye on the Mouri girl as he did.  
  
The expression that had crossed the master thief's half-visible face had, even as fleeting as it had been, rattled Ran considerably, and she bit back a choke of breath; her hands came up defensively, clenching-- and then relaxed slightly as she blinked, perplexed as the man went from visibly angry into laughter.  "...you-- um-- you drugged her, she's just an old woman.  If that's not bullying, what is it?"  A couple of steps and she'd be at the door.  
  
And on the other side of that door, the sound of Ran's footsteps and their evident goal finally clicked.  _CrapCrapCrap!_   Conan looked around wildly, reaching for the nearest thing that looked to be of at least some use in the situation.   
  
"'Just' an old woman?"  Kid laughed, lifting his hat with one hand - but keeping the brim angled down to shield his face - while he ran one gloved hand through his hair with the other, ruffling his bangs.  "Mouri-san, that 'old woman' - though I prefer 'esteemed gentlelady' - is the most potent person in this room," Kid admitted with an insouciant look, "and I include myself and our venerated detective companions in that estimation."   
  
 Settled, Kid moved to stand at the bedside again, looking fondly down at the unconscious pair slumped over its foot end.  Withdrawing another gas capsule from his pocket, he pierced one end and set it down on the bed between Kikoman-sama and her nephew; he was just about to withdraw his hand when another clamped around his wrist, fingers cold and thin, all bone where they pressed against his bare wrist.   
  
 Kikoman-sama slitted one eye open, struggling with an effort to speak.  "You shouldn't count...me out...so soon, honey," she said, a confidently saucy note in her words even as hard as she had to strain to form them.   
  
 Impressed, Kid stared at the tough old magnate, then with a smile picked up the sluggishly hissing gas capsule and chucked it away from Kikoman-sama, to land in her assistant Noyen's lap.  "My apologies, lady," he said, sounding truly contrite.  "If you'd transfer your grip to my other wrist, now, I might help you sit up again?"  
  
"Certainly.  I'd never--" and Kikoman-sama paused for a second to take a gasp of clearer air, "--turn down a handsome man's arm," she finished, eyes twinkling in a wrinkled face that still showed traces of the strong beauty that had graced her younger self.  Her thin hand, nails painted delicately, left Kid's wrist... but instead of gripping the opposite arm, her hand came down to grip his own.  
  
 There was something in her palm-- something small and shining, something smooth and glinting all the colors of honey.  When she slid her hand away and back up against the thief's elbow for stability, the something was no longer there.  
  
"Take it," she murmured beneath her breath as she steadied her slight weight against his arm.  
  
 Kid's gloved hand closed smoothly over the Amber Wing, simple slight of hand disappearing it into his sleeve with hardly a conscious thought.  A slight frown of concern crossed his face, turned toward Kikoman-sama, as he helped her rise.  But she blithely ignored it, and that glance was all he could spare before she was stably seated upright on the edge of the bed, ankles crossed in a misleadingly prim manner, and Kid turned to face the Mouri girl again.  
  
"I hope I have assuaged your concerns of my...bullyhood," Kid addressed her, smiling slightly through the shadows and reflected light that played across his face as he walked toward the window once again.  "I believe this evening's jaunt has been a successful one, and I truly do not want to test your mettle against mine.  I don't like entering contests I might not win.  So, for now--"  
  
He lifted the window sash, smiling as the evening's cool breeze came in the window.  Kikoman-sama's assistant and nephew would perk up quickly with this influx of fresh air, he was sure, so it was time for the Kaitou Kid to be on his way.  
  
It was at this point that several things occurred simultaneously:  
  
One-- Mouri Ran's hand, which had been reaching slowly for the knob to the maidservant's room, clutched at said knob unconsciously and turned it.  
  
Two-- Conan, who had just reached towards the selfsame door with every intent of shoving it open, came through at what could only be called a stagger. In one hand he brandished an oversized blowdrier, the cord trailing behind him.  
  
Three-- From the bed, Kikoman Sou (who had apparently not been sleeping at all, oddly enough) suddenly leaped to his feet, snatched the jewelry box from his great-aunt's lap, bellowed "I'LL SAVE IT!" and darted towards the door behind Conan.  Or tried to...  
  
During his stint as a somewhat shrunken detective, Edogawa Conan had been labeled a nuisance, a pain in the nether regions, a know-it-all and a few other less polite terms; now he proved his worth as an obstacle, stumbling just as Kikoman-san hit him in full run.  The man went down with a yelp; the blowdrier followed after, smacking him squarely on the head as it swung from the boy's hand on its cord, and the two ended up in a pile on the floor.  
  
Silence.  
  
Kid looked from the pile of detective and well-meaning nephew, to Mouri Ran, who was staring in somewhat stunned horror, and did his best to hide his disgust. Well, bemused disgust.  Still - this was Edogawa's best plan?  A blowdrier?  _Oi._  
  
Kid saluted Ran and threw himself head and shoulders out the window.  If anyone looked after him, they wouldn't even see his glider floating away - nothing but an empty, quiet night sky above the darkened Kikoman estate grounds.  
  
* * *  
  
A little later, after Conan had been scolded ('But Ran-neechan, I got lost! Really!') and the groaning Kikoman Sou had had his bruises cared for ('.....aaagh.....') and a surprisingly light-hearted Kikoman-sama had been ensconced in a comfortable chair with a cup of tea ('Be a love and pour a little brandy in that, would you, Noyen?  --a little more; there.  Now, what did you say your name was, dear?  Takagi, was it?'), a lone figure slipped into one of the quieter hallways and into a disused room.  
  
A cellphone flipped open; by the dim blue light of its screen, nimble fingers flicked a control into a familiar configuration, and a number was tapped out.  Somewhere in the house another phone beeped.  
  
 _"Moushi moushi... One sec, Takagi-tantei, I have to take care of this... Is that you, Kudo-san?"_  
  
Conan-- Shinichi-- smiled to himself and spoke into his voice modulator.  "Of course.  Did the plan work, Kikoman-sama?"  
  
The old woman's voice was merry.  _"Like a charm, darling.  The copy of the Wing went into the jewelry box, my disgustingly corrupt nephew tried to run off with it just as you said he would, and--"_   She paused, tone darkening; _"--I'll have a few words to say to that little bastard when he stops whining to the police about how he did his best to save it.  I always said his mother threw one over on my son; the brat looks just like the gardener I fired when he was a baby."_   She snorted.  Kikoman-sama might have had common roots, but at least they'd been honest ones.  _"He would've hidden it and claimed that handsome thief'd taken it from him, wouldn't he?"_  
  
"I'm afraid so," said Shinichi calmly, fighting back a snort of his own at the 'handsome thief' comment.  "It's a pity he didn't try for it a few seconds earlier; if he had, you wouldn't've had to pass it over to Kid."  
  
There was a soft laugh on the other end of the line; quite a girlish one, with a strong hint of mischief.  _"Well now, darling; if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't get to see him bring it back to me, now would I?"_   She was smiling; you could practically hear it.  _"And he always returns what he steals, after all, doesn't he?"_  
  
"Yes," said Kudo Shinichi; that was certain at least.  "He does."  
  
The Kaitou Kid might be a thief; but he was, in this one and certain thing, absolutely honest.  No one, not even the Detective of the East, had a clue why he stole jewels and returned them; but he did-- safe and sound, unmarred and exactly as they had been the day they were stolen.  
  
Always.  
  
It was, considered Kudo Shinichi, a very strange world when your most dependable way of keeping a valuable thing safe was to make certain that it got stolen by the best thief in the business.  
  
* * *  
  
It wasn't easy to pick a disguise in a climate like Kikoman's mansion tonight; every head counted, every badge carefully checked, what precious few of them there were.  Kid eventually resorted to duplicating one of Takagi's supporting detectives, stuffing the man himself in a closet on the second floor.  It was more risky than being a face in the crowd, as in this identity he could be found out relatively easily through forced conversation, but the whole evening wasn't sitting right to him, and he had determined not to leave the mansion until he'd figured out why.  
  
He was now wishing he had.  Though he could only hear Kikoman-sama's half of the conversation, that was still plenty; he could easily fill in the missing pieces.  And the rage that he felt bubbling up to his surface quickly had him finding an excuse to leave the room and drop his disguise.  Poker Face or no, Kid was pretty sure that at this rate, his anger would soon be palpable enough that even the half-rate Mouri would notice something 'off' with Detective-- Detective--  
  
Kid looked at his badge as he laid the uniform next to its original owner.  _Ishida._   Detective Ishida.  He had to get clear of the scene.  He was off his game and his guard was flagging, a dangerous situation in any cirucmstance.  Even more so when his judgement was so clouded by anger.  
  
As Kid made his way away from the mansion in civilian garb and on foot, the Amber Wing clutched tightly in one palm, his mind kept circling back to the same concept, over and over, and the further he walked, the deeper into icy, immovable fury he descended.  
  
 _Cat's-paw.  Cat's-paw.  Edogawa - Kudo - used me as a_ _cat's-paw._  
  
He was already composing his next note.  
  
**  
  
It was, thought Kudo Shinichi behind Edogawa Conan's eyes during the trip home as he (supposedly) dozed in the back of Mouri's rental, a bit of a pity that the Phantom Thief hadn't stuck around a little longer.  If he had...  
  
...if he had, he might have heard a certain Detective of the East admitting to his client (whose number he had gotten hold of after she had called Mouri) that the most hazardous moment of the night had been when she had slipped the Amber Wing to Kid.  If the thief had rejected it as a possible trap, then the fragile gem might have been damaged.  There were only three certified pieces of amber with actual prehistoric feathers in them; the Wing was not only a choice piece of art, it was a priceless scientific treasure.  
  
...if he had, he might also have overheard the slight qualm in said Detective's voice as he asked Kikoman-sama: What would she do if this gem, this particular gem, was the one that 1412 was so obviously searching for?  What if the thief _didn't_ return it?  
  
...and if he had, he might have caught Kudo's client's response as well.  _"Sweetheart, if I had a choice between seeing that lump of fossilized pinesap vanish forever or seeing it sold for a pittance to cover Sou's gambling debts and bordello tabs, I'd tuck the damn thing into that thief's knickers myself.  You don't worry about that."_  
  
But-- well.  If wishes were horses and so forth, thought Shinichi a little morosely; he closed his eyes, head pillowed against the car's armrest.  If wishes were horses...  
  
His thoughts blurred; and as sleep began to steal away his consciousness like the thief it was, he wondered just how much he'd pissed off Kid _this_ time.  
  
He supposed he'd find out, sooner or later.  
  
* * *  
  
Conan didn't hear from Kid for a week after the Amber Wing heist.  Nobody did, actually, and there was no laughing newspaper ad printed to declare one side or another the victor in the mysterious, anonymous challenge.  The media didn't know what to make of it; Nakamori claimed Kid was sulking, though his only proof seemed to be that he _wanted_ Kid to be sulking.  
  
When the note finally came, it came privately, to Conan at the Kudo mansion, addressed to Shinichi.  There was no postmark or stamp on it to reveal the date it was delivered.  It was very terse.  
  
 _"These_ detectives _always fail by their strength.  There came a crash and a scream...and the priest of Apollo did not start or look around.  I did not know what it was.  But I knew that he was expecting it."  
  
I am disappointed in you, Tantei-kun.  
  
Kid._  
  
The caricature face that always accompanied Kid's signature was there, but instead of a toothy grin it wore a deep frown.  
  
*  
  
Standing just inside the Kudo mansion's foyer, Conan-- Shinichi-- gritted his teeth.  _Yeah, fine, FINE already, I get the picture._   It wasn't like he hadn't expected censure from the Phantom Thief, but...  
  
The thing was this: Conan, like all children, was a manipulator.  It was how kids survived, mostly-- they changed their environments by being cute or intelligent or quick or stubborn or by wearing down the adults that cared for them.  Add one transformed almost-adult to this mix, and you had an additional tool: logic.  And Shinichi/Conan had gotten rather good at manipulation.  He'd had to.  
  
So when the plan to keep the gem safe from an inept, clumsy, stupid thief (one who'd made several unsuccessful attempts already and nearly smashed the priceless thing in doing so) required that Edogawa Conan fail and the Kaitou Kid succeed, Kudo Shinichi was willing to let this happen.  Kikoman-sama hadn't been willing to turn over her nephew to the police; and rather than see him go to the extremes of injuring her or worse, she'd agreed to go along with the famous Kudo Shinichi's plan.  
  
...which had, in its success, included his alter-ego's failure.  
  
The note crumpled in his small fingers, and Conan rubbed the crease between his eyes; he was getting a headache.  How did Kid DO these things to him?  He'd pay for this one.  
  
 _But Kid failed by_ _his_ _strength, too; he did what I wanted him to do, exactly what I wanted him to do, because he was what he was: damn good at his job._  
  
Carefully folding the note and slipping it back into its envelope, the detective rubbed his forehead again and stepped outside into the late afternoon sunlight, locking the door behind him.  
  
* * *  
  
Kaitou Kid pulled five heists in the span of six nights in the middle of the month following the Kikoman heist.  The last of these was announced first, a full calendar week before the Saturday when it was to occur.  With sufficient warning, Nakamori set enough paperwork in motion to cover a thorough and excessive mobilization of resources in opposition to the Phantom Thief.    
  
The following Monday, payment for a full page of black and white ad space arrived at the headquarters of all the papers which printed weekday evening editions.  Each of them ran the requested ad, a heist announcement for _that night_ , with no mention of the anticipated Saturday heist.  The Task Force, which had been making its preparations on a rather longer timeline than three hours, was caught with its pants down, and only a third of its resources were levied against the Kid that evening.  His target was a bank which displayed one diamond as the punctuation in each instance of its logo, displayed on many of the bank's interior and exterior walls.   Though not jewelry-quality, the gems were still of significant carat, and Kid's glider rode low in the sky as he coasted home with six of them weighting his pockets.  
  
 Tuesday night, the next heist announcement was made by radio during the afternoon lunch hour.  Some of the city's bolder employees and students, Suzuki Sonoko among them, simply didn't return to class and work for the afternoon.  A queue of excited fans gathered outside the targeted department store hours before the intended heist, hobbling the law enforcement and Task Force members who attempted to set up barricades and police lines.  In the end, they needn't've bothered; Kid revealed himself in disguise as the store's manager at the height of the heist, then dove head-first off the top floor of the building with the opal face of the store's decorative grandfather clock in his hands, cackling madly.  The glider opened at the fifteenth floor and he zoomed away over the heads of the gathered crowd, eyes fixed forward, ignoring the screaming, swooning fans below him.  
  
 Wednesday night, the heist note came to Nakamori's desk as an inter-office memo, but Kid had done such a good job of making it look like any other memo that Nakamori didn't realize what it actually was until hours after it had been delivered, sandwiched inbetween junk mail and drafts of late press releases about the prior night's heist.  It took the decoding team two tries to be sure that they'd gotten the message right, and by that time it was too late to do anything but send a troop of cruisers over to the electrical power plant on the edge of the city to disperse the press that had gathered there.  Of all things, Kid had - largely without witnesses - made off with a small plate of palladium that functioned in the operation of one of the big generators, and in taking it had shorted out one-sixth of the city's residential power.  The city tried to pin the cost of replacement on Nakamori's team; he spent the entirety of Thursday informing them that the full moon was in one night and that they could damn well ration the power to make up the difference for that time until the plate was returned.  
  
 Thursday night, the heist (politely advertised in chalk on every blackboard in the third years' first-period classrooms) took place at Teitan High itself, where Kid relieved the principal's office of its brass plaque studded with tiny ruby chips, one to commemorate each year that the teaching staff had received "Excellence in Education" awards from the district.  Nobody, not even Nakamori, could make sense of this theft, the value of which was dismissable even in comparison to the other strange thefts of the week.  Teitan students decided among themselves that Kid was showing favoritism to his beloved fans, and a rivalry festered quickly between students of other schools and a faction of elitist Teitan members who publicized the heist's significance with great emphasis on their own loyalty to Kid's "cause."  
  
Friday night, the full moon, there was no heist.  
  
* * *  
  
And on the night of the full moon, Edogawa Conan sat at the top of the stairs that led to the Mouri Detective Agency, elbows on knees, thinking hard about patterns.  
  
 _Diamonds, opal, palladium, rubies.  Words, time, power, rewards.  A bank, a store, a power-plant, a school._   Conan's eyebrows drew down, a line forming between them as he considered.  _Kid could be sending a message, he could be trying to taunt me-- that last thing with Teitan, dammit-- or he could just be working overtime.  What the hell?_   His best bet was on the second set of symbols, if the thief was actually trying to spell something out...  
  
 _...and not just trying to drive me insane,_ thought Conan with a wince.  
  
Overhead, the full moon rode high in the clouds; behind him he could hear the television playing some late-night drama full of muted explosions.  It was well after Edogawa Conan's bedtime, which was why Kudo Shinichi'd snuck out with little trouble; Ran had gone to bed and Mouri was snoring in front of the tv screen, his last beer sitting half-full on the table in front of him.  
  
Words. Time. Power. Rewards.  The faux gradeschooler ran one hand through his hair irritably, making it stand on end; what was he supposed to read out of that?  
  
"You're thinking too hard," came a whisper from some distance behind him - far enough to be at the doorway of the agency, or perhaps a bit further into the hallway.  "Or else you'd have gotten it already.  I tried to make it crystal clear enough for even you."  
  
Conan stiffened; as much as he hated reacting so visibly, this was _his_ territory, and--  He forced his shoulders to relax.  "Fine," he said as civilly as possible, refusing to turn around.  "So you're a master of the obvious.  Just what did I miss?"  
  
 The silence that followed Conan's question was just long enough for a scathingly unimpressed glare.  Crouching in the open doorway with Mouri, moonlight, and ambient light and noise from the television turned low behind him, Kid pulled out his card gun and cocked it, using its sound to dissuade any bright ideas from lingering in Conan's mind.  
  
"How would I know what you've missed, my _dear_ detective, if you haven't told me what you haven't missed yet?" he asked, tone emphasizing the simplicity of that particular oversight.  
   
The sound of the card-gun being cocked wasn't a welcome one, to say the least.  "There's the jewels; no pattern," said Conan calmly, keeping still.  "Ditto for the locations. And there's the symbolism-- words, time, power and rewards.  Well?"  
  
"Wrong on two counts.  Though I suppose the fourth one is a bit obscure if you don't have the mental syntax in place.  Here's a freebie: The rubies were for learning."  
  
Back still turned, Conan-- Shinichi-- hiked one shoulder up into a shrug.  "Words... emphasis?  Time and power and learning..." he trailed off, thinking hard.  "Sending me off to college, Kid?"  The boy laughed a little.  "I don't think I'll fit in."  
  
 There was the sound of fabric, the tap and slide of Kid's heels on the floor as he sat down behind Conan, one leg extended out in front of him, the other gathered beneath him.  Conan could probably see the toe of one shoe from the corner of his eye.  Kid sighed, and uncocked the gun.  "Either I'm slipping, or you are, or neither of us were great to start with."  He sounded not like himself.  Very tired, but bitterness laced his words like a steady flashlight beam through latticework.  "Where did you get words from, anyway?  Diamonds at a bank, Kudo.  Money."  
   
Shinichi muttered something beneath his breath that was probably better left unheard.  "Punctuation, words.  I _am_ off my game."  Oddly enough, Kid's proximity was far less threatening than the distance of a moment before, card-gun or not.  Perhaps it was the fact that they were both (more or less) on the same level now.  The boy gave a mental shrug, thinking about what the other had just said.  
  
"Money, time, power, learning."  Conan leaned against the staircase wall, still resolutely not trying to look behind him.  "I was being too literal."  He rubbed at his eyes and winced.  "...I'm tired."  Wait, he hadn't meant to say that last, but since he had-- "And so are you.  Or you sound that way, anyway.  Why?  Why four heists in a week?"  
  
 "Five," Kid reminded him, "Tomorrow.  If Nakamori-keibu isn't ready for it, after I gave him a whole uninterrupted _week_ to prepare..."  A little of the mischief was back in his voice as he teased, moving on too quickly for Conan - Shinichi - to take verbal issue with it.  
  
"It's your fault, you know," he said then, numbly shocked at himself for confiding so much even as he said it.  It struck him again how much attention he'd given, the past week, toward _not_ interacting with Kudo as much as possible.  It had been exhausting, in its own way.  "The riddle is for you, the heists are because of you, and tomorrow's heist is--" He paused, then put on a girlish tone as he gathered his feet beneath him, preparing to depart.  " _All for you~_ , Tantei-kun."  
  
The movement as much as anything made Shinichi finally turn around.  "Wait--" he said, and swallowed his pride before it had a chance to choke the words in his throat.  "Kid?  I-- want to apologize."  He kept his voice level, hating the boyish tenor that squeaked slightly when it shouldn't have.  "For what I did in the other heist.  I had a limited range of choices, and-- I won't apologize for the results, but I will for the means."  
  
There, he'd done it.  He'd hated it, but he'd said it.  
  
 Conan stood taller than Kid himself did now, with the thief perching crouched on his toes, gloved fingertips holding himself in gentle balance against the hard floor.  The cape hung in curls around him, making him look bigger than he was, an effect not dissimilar to the mantled posture of birds' half-open wings just before an attack.  The backlight from the window cast him in hard shadow and brightly lit Conan's face, twisted like he'd swallowed a lemon, but willingly.  Kid relied on shadows alone while the reflection of light off glass played off of Conan's lenses instead.  
  
A long still moment passed between them, Kid using every advantage of position and lighting to scrutinize the detective's face and let him squirm in wait for the thief's answer.  Finally he shifted, moving one arm to tuck his card gun away in its shoulder holster.  The line of his mouth shifted, a hair less firm, but no more encouraging.  He spoke very carefully.  
  
"In case you have missed your mistake yet again, Tantei-san, I will elucidate it for you.  It is not that you successfully manipulated me that galls so harshly.   It is that the notion to do so ever occurred to you.  There is no partnership between us, no comraderie."  
  
He stood, pulling one half of the cape across his chest to cover his suit and his form, and looked down at Shinichi's diminutive new body with no strong emotion of any sort.  Half a dozen thoughts passed through his mind, and he discarded each one, seeking the proper wording for the thorny conflict he still held unexposed.  To Conan's credit, he maintained silence for the couple breaths that it took for Kid to gather his words.  
  
"But perhaps I fooled myself into believing that there could yet be an understanding in that space between us, instead.  I expect your best, every night that my heists summon you.  You expect the same of me, I suppose.  And yet - there is nothing of that understanding in manipulating your supposed equal into a contrived victory, a tin puppet on strings, while you swan about with small appliances and play the fool -- even to _me_."  
  
A sharp, shallow intake of breath followed the last phrase - an admission far beyond what Kid had intended.   Yet again, his guard was in tatters.  He was leaving, now.  
  
"You're... right in that.  It wasn't a victory for me either."  What else could he say?  He'd saved the Amber Wing from being sold or destroyed by Kikoman-sama's idiot nephew, but the accomplishment had been ashes in his mouth.  
  
"Goddammit, I'm sorry," he growled, looking away.  
  
With his back to Conan, framed in the doorway, Kid halted yet again and, despite every alarm in his head telling him not to, turned to face his -- his conversational partner, he decided.  With things as they were, nothing else fit.  "But the Amber Wing's safe," Kid offered, an olive branch to recognize the vulnerability Shinichi was showing in his apology.  "And you didn't set up a trap to catch me, either."  He took a step forward, toward Shinichi, and paused.  
  
"Take off your watch," Kid murmured.  
  
Shinichi blinked.  'Take off his--' _What?_   He turned back, and his breath caught the way words had not a few minutes before.  
  
The thief still held his card-gun; but now it dangled loosely from his hand, one finger curved to allow it to hang beside his knee as it was slowly lowered to the concrete.  As slowly, understanding the gesture but not really allowing himself to think about it too hard, Shinichi slid a finger beneath his watchband and undid the catch.  It slid, a slither of silver, to drop gently onto the steps below.  
  
And then he waited.  What else could he do?  
  
Kid breathed out, something in his shoulders unwinding subtly, and smiled broadly at the other.  "There, that's better," he said, much more cheerily than before.  "Do you think that's unreasonable of me, Kudo?" Kid asked, picking up an earlier thread of conversation as though there had been no interruption.  "Thinking of us as equals, I mean."  
  
Shinichi breathed out as well, unconsciously following suit.  "Only if you don't make any height jokes," he answered wryly.  "God knows you give me more trouble than most of the murderers I've met.  And at least," he added with what was almost an attempt at humor, "there're no corpses around afterwards."  
  
 Kid smiled at that, dropping back into a crouch, but following that to sitting position, one leg folded under, one folded out as before.  With a negligent wave of his hand, he affected a different voice, mimicking Hakuba Saguru.  "Bloody hard to clean up after, that lot," he deadpanned, a little more strongly than before.  "Can't even teach them to leave the dishes in the sink."  
  
Even as Kid chuckled at his own joke, massive red klaxons were going off in the back of his head, flashing warning and paranoia and alertness.  But like a rat in a trap, Kid stood his ground squarely, bearing the electrical zap because the cheese, he'd discovered, was just so damn good.   _This will not end well._  
  
The boy raised an eyebrow at the sudden Anglicization of 1412, slightly startled and more than a little amused.  The conversation was getting distinctly weirder and weirder with every passing second.  "No, but they're pretty good at hiding the evidence," he answered.  "Just not good enough."   
  
 Kid opened his mouth to answer, froze, and grabbed his card gun.  Without even a glance over his shoulder, he threw himself silently and swiftly down the short hallway, moving as far from the open office door as possible, then pressed himself against the near wall and completely froze.  
  
Even as Kid's cape fell still, swinging to a stop around his shins, Mouri Kogoro appeared in the doorway of his office, blearily rubbing sleep from his eyes, alcohol and stale-smelling chips on his breath.  "C'nan?  What're you doin' up this hour?"  
  
Conan-- did a kind of full-body stutter.  "Uh..."  It would occur to him later that he could have done any of a dozen things just then: pointed and yelled, grabbed his watch, even taken off in a dead run down the stairs in a manner sure to make Mouri raise the alarm.  Instead, for reasons that seemed perfectly good and logical at the time, he simply goggled at the groggy detective for a second or two before replying "...I heard a noise?"  
  
...and docily headed up the stairs and in through the door, pulling it closed behind him.  
  
Leaving his watch where it lay.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Kogoro watched Conan go, blinking after the boy; then he turned back to his office door, rubbing at his hair as he shuffled back inside.  
  
Two steps inside the office, he paused, belatedly putting significance to the sleepy signals from his peripheral vision.  He ducked head and shoulders back into the hallway, looking down the length of it to its darkened end.  
  
Empty walls and bare floor stood dark and still.  
  
Confused - hadn't there been a light on at that end of the hall?  Something bright? - Kogoro dismissed his mistake as an oversight and laid down on his office couch, lulling himself to sleep with the sound from a VHS of Yoko-chan's Kansai performance from two summers ago, the good one where she chatted with the audience inbetween songs.  
  
* * *  
  
Saturday.  
  
Nakamori wasn't sure if he was relieved or frustrated that the day had finally come.    He hadn't slept well the night prior at all, jerking awake every half hour from nightmare visions of heist notes fluttering down around his shoulders like snow while Kid, in his pure white suit and, strangely, equally white tie and white shirt, did loops above the heads of all the Task Force members.  At Nakamori's side, Conan held a remote-controlled handset, like those used to drive small R/C cars, turning the dials with focus.  
  
The inspector looked again at the heist note.  It had been scanned and enlarged to one hundred times its normal size, but not even such close scrutiny as that could reveal any hidden characters or codes in the lines of ink that formed its simple message.  No embossed, heat-sensitive, invisible ink, or woven message was integrated into the paper.  There was, to the best of the Task Force's resources to deduce, absolutely nothing fishy about the note, except for every aspect of the note itself.  It was too short, too direct, and for crying out loud--  
  
 _Let's have a Saturday picnic: Beika Park, noon.  
  
\--KID_  
  
\--it set a date for the _daytime!_   Nakamori let his head drop to his hands again, tipping forward in his office chair to rest his aching head.  It was eleven-thirty: whatever Kid had planned, it would happen soon.  
  
Surprisingly, the thought was comforting.  
  
* * *


	2. "Bento, angels, brawl"

_**Chapter Two: "Bento, angels, brawl"**_  
 ****  
  
A daylight "heist." What had he been thinking?  
  
The answer to that came all too easily.  
  
"Benten dammit." Kid, disguised as Kuroba Kaito, sat idly swinging in a playground swingset scaled for smaller bodies than even his own narrow hips. The chains dug into his hipbones as he kicked at the ground rubber padding that was laid across the whole playground. From his vantage point, he could see the two nearest entry points to the park, as well as the intended point of the first diversion. The Task Force was already stationed in an orderly (and overkill) method all around the park, though Nakamori wasn't on the scene yet. Kudo was, eyeing everything around with his trademark acuity, so out of place in any child's face but his own.   
  
At the sight of him, Kid kept the frustrated fondness off his face, instead focusing on the trio of children - actual children, if their behavior was any clue - who were tagging along after "Conan." One of them, the girl, had a voice naturally destined for the stage; it carried clearly, across the playground to his ears. Scanning the crowd again, Kid noticed a fourth child - this one was either having a bad day or was another nonchild like Kudo himself.   
  
With this many children underfoot, there had to be a guardian somewhere, as well, Kid reasoned. Would do to keep them in mind as the heist proceeded, then. Though they seemed comfortable in a regulated setting like that imposed by the Task Force, they still looked longingly at the rest of the children that scampered around the playground, and the adults of all ages who had brought blankets, picnic baskets, and entertainment, and had arranged themselves all across the park and even the playground itself. Kid's newspaper announcement had contained no more specific location than the entirety of Beika Park; every one of his fans in attendance was, he knew, desperately hoping that they'd picked the right spot to be up close and personal with the Kaitou Kid himself.  
  
A few of them would be, Kid smiled. But not in the way they expected.  
  
 _Showtime,_ he murmured to himself.  
  
*  
  
"A picnic." Ai's voice was, if anything, more blandly sardonic than usual. _"Which_ picnic? You're spoiled for choice here, aren't you?" She spoke quietly enough that the other three Shonen Tantei couldn't hear-- not that they would have anyway, what with what seemed like thousands of shrieking children running in all directions. Beika had apparently declared Saturday to be a sort of thievish semi-holiday in honor of the Kid.  
  
 _Bread and circuses. The whole damn thing's a huge show. So where's the showman?_ Conan shrugged the thought away, uneasily certain that the audience (himself included) was playing a dual role, acting as props in addition to being 1412's cheering squad.  
  
Ayumi had picked them a place against a fence, between the swings and the largest contingent of Nakamori's men; despite the knowledge that they were there for a serious reason, the general excitement and noise had the three actual children of the small group pinging off each other like rubber balls. "Is it noon yet? Do you see him?" she asked Conan, craning her neck to look past a tangle of older kids. "Maybe he's in a tree? Maybe he'll fly in like he did to my place? Maybe he's gonna--"  
  
Genta and Mitsuhiko both looked at their watches. "Just about--" said the larger one, and "Noon!" said the smaller of the two simultaneously.  
  
Conan nodded silently to himself, fingers sliding up almost unconsciously to the trigger-catch on his own watch as the second hand crept around. "Good," said Ayumi cheerfully, leaning back against the fence. "I'm getting tired of waiting."  
  
 _So am I,_ thought Conan as the hand reached its mark. Beside him, Ai shrugged, watchful eyes ever so slightly amused. _So am I._  
  
Noon. All three watch-hands stood straight up at attention.  
  
* * *  
  
Beneath an otherwise innocent-looking elm tree, an elm that was completely minding its business, was a nice orderly park citizen, never dropped its leaves in anyone's tea, thanks very much, and really didn't ask to be located at the center of all this hubbub with all these police officers just over there, rather too close for comfort, really; beneath that tree, there was abruptly a picnic basket. Just there, from one moment to the next. It was a nice honey wicker contraption, with a white fabric liner that peeked out from beneath its double-hinged solid wooden lid. The lid was closed, but the toggles to latch it shut were not tied.   
  
The basket sat, obediently behaving as basketlike as was possible, under the elm tree, as though it hoped anyone who might have witnessed its instantaneous arrival would pardon it that indiscretion, and go on with believing it to be the most perfectly-behaved and perfectly-arranged basket ever.  
  
Unsurprisingly, the basket's case was weakened by the presence of a small triangular charm, silver and grass-green enamel, dangling on a delicate bead chain from the center top of its handle.  
  
Not that the basket knew where that charm came from, of course. It didn't have anything to do with that charm. It was there when it got here.  
  
* * *  
  
The sound of expectation isn't so much a sound as a hush: an indrawing, an awareness and the sudden moment when a crowd holds its breath and makes a wish for _something to happen._ As noon broke across Beika Park, it was accompanied by a complicated rush of silence composed entirely of People Looking Around For The Kaitou Kid.  
  
Including Conan and the Shonen Tantei. And Nakamori and his squad. And a very nervous batch of park security guards. And (presumably) the Kid himself, somewhere.  
  
So when the teenagers who had settled down beneath a tree roughly thirty meters or so away nudged each other about the abandoned picnic basket that some idiot had apparently left behind, nobody was particularly disappointed at what happened when one of them opened the lid.  
  
The girl who'd leaned in closest to see the basket's contents was quickly sorry that she had; a sudden faceful of strongly flapping feathers (borne by a bird who really doesn't give a crap whether you're in the way or not, it's going to fly right through you unless you move) turned out an effective deterrent, and she fell back onto her rump, squeaking in surprise. The boy beside her let out a shriek, then blushed fiercely as his companions momentarily forgot the contents of the picnic basket to glare at him.  
  
(A hundred meters away, Kid snickered. _Good girl, Yukari,_ he thought. _Wait in the apple tree till we're done._ )  
  
As the teens crowded around the basket again, relatively sure that no more doves were going to come fluttering out of it, the rest of the crowd in the near vicinity pressed in around them too, trapping them and the basket within an arc of excited humanity. Shrieks from the center of the crowd indicated distress, but the veracity of it came into quick doubt as others in the crowd took up screaming as well, and the area around the very embarrassed elm tree became a shrieking, dangerously packed-together mass.  
  
"EVERYBODY MOVE, NOW!"  
  
Nakamori blasted his way through the press, Task Force members behind him to hold open the aisle created in his wake, and escorted the group of teens, as well as the mystery basket, quickly away from the foot of the elm tree, bellowing at the top of his lungs. "Back off, get out of my way! Pinch everyone! MOVE!"  
  
Ignoring the relief of that deciduous worrier now left to groom her leaves and watch from a distance, Nakamori began to examine the basket's contents within a perimeter of Task Force members. The previous week's heists were stacked neatly, wrapped in bento cloths, beneath a pair of actual bento boxes, which by the weight of them were full. One was marked "Edogawa Conan," and one read "Nakamori Ginzo." A written note laid flat beneath the whole bundle.  
  
Maloderously dead fish-- no, a maloderously, disgustingly dead body would have received a better welcome than the leaden-eyed stare that the boxes were allotted from Nakamori Ginzo. "Camera! Probe!" he barked; and then, resignedly: "And has anybody seen that-- that--" He hadn't come up with an appropriate epithet for Mouri's ward as yet; frankly, Conan gave him the creeps, but this was a very public situation and the prodigy had made his mark in the news. "--the Edogawa boy?" he finished, chewing on his pipe as one of his men hurriedly began taking measurements while another snapped photo after photo.  
  
"Right here, Nakamori-Keibu," said a cheerful voice from about waist-level (how the hell did he DO that?) and the highly-trained, heavily experienced head of the Kaitou Kid Task Force nearly bit the pipestem in two. "I'm right here."  
  
He was, too, glasses and too-bright stare and all. And that little smile of his, sharp as teeth, smack in the thick of things-- Nakamori never could look at the boy without being reminded of some sort of horribly intelligent terrier. Or, just possibly, a psychopath. Someday the boy'd be on the wrong end of a case file, the inspector was sure of it-- probably something that'd make the papers for weeks, all photos and _MISSING CHILD_ headlines...  
  
He had slipped past Nakamori's legs and was peering around the probes man (who was, rather unhappily, prodding the hanging charm with an extendable metal wand while a fellow squadsman wrote down notes about the whole thing). "Shouldn't you set up a cordon?" he asked in that clipped little voice of his. Nakamori growled; he couldn't help it. Nearby, two squadmembers looked at each other, blinked, and beelined it to the equipment truck for some boundary tape.  
  
The note from beneath the bento boxes was, with some ceremony, duly extracted. With trepedation, Nakamori read it aloud:  
  
 _A treasure hunt?  
  
The gem that never shimmers the same way twice, that shines brightest as the light runs from it (and as it runs, following the light)._  
  
"A light that moves," muttered the inspector, examining the thin paper; as usual, there seemed to be no watermarks, hidden text, etc. "A spotlight? Beacon? Signal light on a building? Some kind of illumination, followed by..." He was barely aware of the voice below his elbow, carrying on its own monologue:  
  
"...never the same way twice; brightest in darkness, illuminated by the lack of something else's light." There was a silence. "The moon, following the sun?" A longer silence. "No. Never the same way twice-- what changes constantly?"  
  
Nakamori smoothed the note through his fingers, unconsciously tracing the characters over and over and thinking hard. "Crowds, traffic patterns--"  
  
"Leaves in the wind, water-- water? There's a stream--"  
  
The inspector blinked. _What?_ He looked down.  
  
The boy was staring, not at the note but at the basket; his eyes glittered behind the transparent mask of his glasses, and as he glanced up at the man the sunlight glazed one momentarily in a flash of white: like a monocle, like the moon. "What about the bentos?" he asked in a slightly more childlike voice than he'd used a moment before. "Should we open those too, Nakamori-Keibu?"  
  
"Probes already should have," the inspector answered gruffly, looking over his shoulder to check on the progress of that team. "Well?"  
  
"Rice and seaweed salad, keibu," one of the team answered back, looking puzzled as he held up one bento for examination, tilted at an angle so that Nakamori could see it. On the surface of the rice, packed densely into a large section, was a sheet of nori cut out in the shape of Kid's signature caricature. Beside it, in a smaller section, was a dark green tangle of seaweed salad. A tiny twist of pink ginger finished out the bento, which was packed in a black lacquer box with dark red sakura and maple leaves on it. It was clearly homemade and really quite simple, and proportioned generously enough for a man of Nakamori's size. Conan's bento was similarly arranged, and exactly the same size as the other, but packed into a light blue box with white and pastel kitties on it.  
  
"Edible?"  
  
"Yessir, so far as we can tell. Home-made; no marks from any of the local shops, no receipts, no signs of chemical additions." The squadmember cleared his throat, looking embarrassed. "Uh-- the boxes, you can find those in the local supermarkets; my daughter's got one've the cat ones." He flushed red, an odd combination with his gear and helmet.  
  
"CONAAAAAN-KUUUUN!" The wail came from the perimiter of the crowd, and beside Nakamori the boy's shoulders twitched slightly; through a gap in the squad the Inspector could see Edogawa's small band of-- could a gradeschooler have groupies? "CONAN-KUN, WE WANT TO SEE TOO!" That was the little girl, the dark-haired one.   
  
Nakamori made a Command Decision. "You-- you're in charge of the kids. Keep 'em out of the way, keep 'em safe, do NOT let them near." The appointed squadmember hurried off, met with a chorous of disappointed "Awwww"s, and Edogawa shot him a glance that he could swear was full of gratitude. _Right, back to the subject._ "Water?"  
  
"Water. There's a little stream that runs through the park," the boy answered promptly. "Over there." He pointed, and then looked up innocently at the Inspector. "Shouldn't we eat first, Nakamori-Keibu? If he's watching, he'll expect it, won't he?"  
  
**  
  
A hundred yards away, Kid could just make out the proceedings of the officers and associated personnel. He smiled fondly as Ayumi and the others were turned away - _sorry, chibiko, I didn't have enough bentos for everyone_ \- and then squinted to peer closer, choking back a delighted laugh as Conan accepted his bento with two hands and a little bow, then dropped out of sight behind the crowd - most likely sitting down to eat it, or just a side effect of being so unbelievably short. Nakamori, looking awkward, accepted his bento with considerably more irritation, and began to consume it slowly. The afternoon was turning out rather enjoyable after all, and they hadn't even gotten to the second clue yet.   
  
Kid smiled, running a hand reflexively back through his hair - it felt strange to be out of disguise entirely at a heist, but it was actually safer this way. The Task Force cheek-pinch would defeat even his best latex, and it wasn't like his presence at a heist would seem strange to the Inspector, anyway. He'd seen Kuroba Kaito in Hakuba's company at Kid heists several times - and, by the same token, seen his alibis established as well. Aoko wasn't here - despite the crowd of hundreds (possibly a thousand), Kid knew that she hadn't arrived. He smiled. She would be here soon - but not yet.  
  
* * *  
  
Nakamori was stolidly chomping his way through the seaweed salad; from the way the man had first eyed the small nori Kid-caricature, Conan had expected him to throw it down onto the grass in disgust. However, the Inspector had glared at it for a good five seconds before savagely grinding it between his teeth-- and the faux gradeschooler had been hard put to fight back a very real, very childlike giggle.  
  
He swallowed a bite of his rice; it was seasoned just right, not too much vinegar, not bad at all. And the salad'd been decent too.  
  
 _I owe the thief lunch; great. He'll find a way to collect, too. Oh well._ With the Inner Kudo Shinichi fortified, the outer Edogawa Conan turned his mind back to the problem of the heist. _Dessert. Hope it doesn't disagree with me. 'As it runs, following the light'..._  
  
"Nakamori-Keibu? Where does the stream go?"  
  
The man grunted, wiping his mouth and fingers with a napkin (thoughtfully provided along with lunch.) He flicked the tiny charm swinging from the basket's handle, shooting the boy a Look. "Good question. Why don't you know, you play here, don't you?-- nevermind. Big park, I suppose. I'm not sure; what I _am_ sure is that the b-- ah, that 1412 expects us to follow it." Standing, he looked over the heads of the crowd that still ringed their impromptu picnic, noisy and ready to be entertained. A few words to his men, and the cordon of open space widened; without a look back at his companion, the Inspector headed towards the stream, leaving the boy to catch up.  
  
 _Jerk._ Muttering something uncharitable beneath his breath, Conan scrambled to his feet and did just that.  
  
The pair, and Nakamori's associated retinue, followed the stream for a good hundred meters with no luck, skirting large trees that grew into the bank, before the shining message was located. Written on the wrong side of a square of origami paper and folded into a clover shape with the paper's metallic silver display side to the outside, it had been pinned to a tree right where the sunlight, shading to an angle now as two o'clock approached, would catch it and reflect brightly. Conan snatched it out of the officer's hands to read it.  
  
 _Congratulations, you've found the first treasure!  
  
"That singular smoky sparkle, at once a confusion and a transparency, which is the strange secret of the Thames."  
  
The second treasure: What covers that which is not closed, surmounts that which is buried deep, is finite and takes in additions? Not so high as the angels, not so low as the scrolls._  
  
Conan frowned down at the glossy scatter of sun that spangled the small stream. "Light on moving water," he murmured, watching how it cast flickers back at the trees. "Illusion and clarity, just like the Kid; he's good at that, visibility that doesn't really show a damn thing except the surface. And as soon as you see that, you want to see what's underneath." He toed a pebble from the bank beside him loose, lobbing it into the center of the widest bit with a soccer enthusiast's aim before shrugging and turning away. "S--"  
  
Nakamori was watching him, a distinctly weirded-out look on his face. _Uh oh._  
  
"That's what Uncle says, anyway... but don't tell him I said a bad word, please, Nakamori-keibu?" _Careful, careful, this is not a stupid man. He's got a temper, but you don't make rank like his by being an idiot._ Conan did his best Wide-Eyed-Painfully-Earnest-Awwww-Isn't-He-Bright expression, hoping it'd be good enough.  
  
"....Sure."  
  
 _Definite_ uh oh. Distraction time. "Do you know what the second riddle means?"  
  
Nakamori took his time answering, looking from Conan to the note. "Buried deep. ....Graves? There's a graveyard--"  
  
Conan knew about the place; Mitsuhiko, for all his scientific bent, was nervous of the markers and monuments, something that both Genta and Ayumi had teased him mercilessly over. It was just outside the park gates, kind of an odd place when you thought of it; but decades before, the park had been part of a private estate with its own cemetary, the upkeep of which had been a part of the family's land bequest to Beika. "'What covers that which is not closed'," the boy murmured, thinking. "A tomb? A vault?"  
  
"Officer!" Nakamori barked out over Conan's head, making the boy jump and all three officers in hearing range startle and spin to face him, "How many crypts in the graveyard outside the park?"  
  
It turned out that there weren't many, just the family's main mausoleum (built back in the late 1800's, when above-ground burial in the European-slash-Victorian style was in vogue among the more progressive families) and a couple of smaller, less accessible mortsafes. Conan had wondered about the pun inherent in those, but even Kid would have difficulty breaking through iron and stonework--  
  
Well. Possibly. _Some_ trouble, at least.  
  
As the pair climbed the slight hill toward the mausoleum - followed at a short distance by Nakamori's officers and evidence team, and at a further distance by a line of determined officers maintaining a cordon against the crowd - the features of the graveyard seemed to shift and slide against each other in perspective, gaining and losing height in proportion. The highest upthrust wingtips of an angelic sculpture came into view above the roof of the mausoleum over which they swept; then the angel's head, face uncharacteristically tipped up to the sky, rose over the soot-blackened stone structure. Iron scrollwork and grilles adorned the edges of the roof and the doors, several bars swooping from the lip of the roof all the way down to bury themselves in the ground in front of the building. Sunlight shone through the latticed iron, dappling the reflection off of Conan's lenses as he and Nakamori came to a halt in front of the mausoleum's doors. Nakamori pointed up, narrating his thoughts in a quiet tone for the benefit of the child at his side.  
  
"Angels...." He shifted his hand down, indicating the most elaborate scrollwork, that just above the doorframe. "Scrolls." Then he pointed between them, to the shadowed and sooty nooks and crannies of the stonework that edged the roof. "Ought to be there."  
  
Conan's gaze had also fixed itself onto the mausoleum's eaves. "Good thing I'm still pretty light," he said absentmindedly, stepping forward to just below the most direct point in line with the angel and glancing back at the inspector. "Well?" he added impatiently. "Pick me up, will you?"  
  
The Inspector blinked. "??"  
  
The faux gradeschooler fought the temptation to roll his eyes. _Seven years old, you're a seven year old prodigy, right? Keep it at seven, Kudo._ "I can't pick up **you** , Nakamori-keibu," he pointed out, putting on his best Cooperative Edogawa face. "But you can pick me up and I can check for you. It's what," he added carefully, "Megure-keibu would do." Which was a lie; he'd probably get a couple of uniforms to go find a ladder first, but still.  
  
And so it was that the head of the Kaitou Kid Task Force ended up with small tennishoes making muddy prints on the shoulders of his suit jacket as Conan poked at the stonework with a borrowed probe. "Anything?" growled the man; behind them, the squad members were suspiciously silent (most of them wanted to live to reach retirement, after all, something that snickering aloud would tend to prevent.)  
  
"Yeah, just...in...here!" Conan struggled with the probe, levering it against the stonework (and hoping that both would hold) in order to drag, by way of friction and fiddling, a tightly-rolled slip of silvered paper free of the stone. With a final yank he pulled it free, overbalancing slightly. He shouted, wobbling on Nakamori's shoulders; it was a good thing that Conan was able to regain his balance in the end, because none of the (still deathly silent) Task Force seemed willing or able to move forward from their spots to help.  
  
As Conan unrolled the paper - having apparently forgotten that he was still standing on Nakamori's shoulders - several of the Task Force members shuffled around in place nervously. Nakamori was all but putting up puffs of steam along with his pipesmoke as Conan, entirely forgetting to act his age, stared intently at the paper. The silence was eventually broken by a quiet snicker, though later, despite a thorough and methodical grilling of all officers who had been at the scene, no one could remember quite which of their colleagues had so traitorously laughed.  
  
In the treeline not far from the mausoleum, a head of tousled brown hair ducked further into the shadows. The giggles its owner indulged in were not ventriloquistically cast for the Task Force's benefit this time, but instead entirely personal.  
  
Kudo.... you're truly something else, Kaitou Kid thought to himself, peeking out once more to watch the tiny detective balancing on his colleague's shoulders, adjusting his weight and footing in slight, instinctive increments with the natural absentmindedness of an athlete.  
  
An athlete, however, who seemed to be growing heavier with every passing second. "You about finished?" growled his sole support from below; the snicker from behind had _not_ escaped Nakamori's notice, he had muddy shoeprints all over his shoulders and he _wanted to know what the goddamn note said._ He shifted impatiently, and Conan put a heel onto his collarbone.  
  
That was the absolute of enough. Large hands abruptly gripped the faux gradeschooler, hauling him down unceremoniously. "Hey!" Nakamori would've gotten the note, too, if Conan hadn't hung onto it like a leech; instead, he got a glare from the Inspector as he steadied himself on the ground beside the mausoleum. "Okay, okay--" The boy cleared his throat.  
  
 _"His name was on a brass plate, and the gilt emblem of his creed hung above his street,"_ he read; _"The third gem is bound by no banks or gates. Never sold, bought or traded, but winnable - only carefully. She is a rare creature indeed, but even if you take her cleanly, her 'twin' will strike you down, by rod or by force. She is mother of none, yet bears a pearl smaller than that black star of hundreds."  
  
"She will be late."_  
  
There was a long pause. The piece of silver paper fluttered in the breeze as Nakamori took it from Conan, squinting at the careful kana. "Now what the hell," the Inspector said slowly.  
  
"Brass plates. There're brass plates around here somewhere," answered the boy, frowning, hands tucked in his pockets. "On the gates--? No. On the park maintanence buildings, but... no; those're mostly black." He kicked irritably at a pebble, chewing his lip. Above him, Nakamori was scanning the park, or at least what he could see of it due to the restless crowd that still milled about at a distance.  
  
"Plates, plaques, signs," he muttered; he'd tucked his hands into his pockets in unconcious mimicry of the boy beside him. "Gnnnrgh. Plates on doors, posts, notices, elevators." Movement from the crowd distracted him; irritably, the man waved at several of his squad. "Yamamoto! Towa! Move the line back-- we need to be able to see. And get those kids off that-- wait." There were three small figures on top of an iron park bench, literally bouncing up and down in an effort to see past the taller adults and teenagers that blanketed the nearby areas; something brass-shiny glinted behind them as they jumped and attempted to climb each other.  
  
A plaque.  
  
Nakamori broke for the bench before he'd even thought to explain it to Conan; the boy followed at a dead run, and the Task Force tried (and failed) to keep a perimeter around the pair as they went.  
  
Conan skidded to a halt before Nakamori did; the grown man kept on till he came right up against the bench, from which point his considerably height - and his intensely focused stare - was more than enough to make even the most intrepid vantage-challenged child rethink his or her choices in makeshift elevation.  
  
Well, Ayumi was something other than intrepid, that was for sure.  
  
"Inspector! Did you find Kid? Did you catch him? Where's -- Oh, hi, Conan-kun! What's -- Inspectoooor, don't push me!" Despite her complaints, however, she did step aside, scooting down the bench toward Genta (Mitsuhiko frowned briefly) to let Nakamori see the plaque mounted on the back of the park bench.  
  
Mr. & Mrs. Allentown.  
For our piano man.  
  
Nakamori stood up straight again, frowning at the plaque. "Well that doesn't make any--" He stopped, attention drawn by a sharp tug on his pant leg.  
  
Haibara Ai stood at his side, one arm extended, finger pointed toward a bench on the other side of the nicely manicured seating area. "Not this one. Over there."  
  
How does she know? Nakamori looked from the serious child at his feet, up, across the gravel and cement, past flowers, to the bench, then scanned across, looking for something, anything, that would be Kid's intended clue. But two high school students sat on the bench, blocking his view of the plaque that was surely attached to it. He was about to approach them, intending to move them as he'd moved Ayumi, but a hand on his knee stopped him. It was Haibara again. This time, she pointed back, behind and to Nakamori's right.  
  
"Don't forget him."  
  
Conan stood a small distance behind Nakamori and his attention was fixed entirely on the bench Haibara had indicated. Concerned, Nakamori examined the students on the bench again - nothing seemed peculiar about the pair of girls, one of which wore a navy blue uniform and whom he could only see a little bit of, since she was facing away from him. If anything, he would simply comment that they looked rather similar. No, he corrected himself, peering closer, they looked nearly identical - the way they held themselves, their haircolor. Then the one in the pale blue uniform noticed Nakamori watching them and tapped her friend on the shoulder. Both girls turned to look at the inspector and the Task Force team behind him.  
  
Nakamori Ginzo stared. "AOKO?"  
  
Conan, behind him, gulped. "...Ran-neechan?"  
  
"What? Oh, hi, Tou-chan."  
"Conan-kun? Were you looking for me?"  
  
The two voices were almost simultaneous, and almost eerily alike; if one was a little brasher and the other a touch softer, it wouldn't take much to turn them around like weathercocks and point them each in the opposite directions, tonewise. Both Nakamori and Conan goggled for a moment before the Inspecor cleared his throat.  
  
"Aoko. _What_ are you doing here?"  
  
She looked at him a little peculiarly. "Watching you work and cheering you on, of course. You know I want to be there when you catch that arrogant rat."  
  
Beside her, Mouri Ran tilted her head, bemused. "You don't like the Kid?"  
  
"LIKE him?!?" It was, thought Conan in something between shock and dismayed amusement, like watching somebody arguing with a funhouse mirror. You had Aoko, telling her version of events--  
  
"--and he makes Tou-chan look like an idiot, and half the time he comes home so tired he falls asleep with his coat still on. And who does he think he is, showing up after eight years and stealing--"  
  
\--and Ran listening with that maybe-I-should-karate-this-guy attentive expression on her face...  
  
"--get hold of him I'll show him where he can stick night after night of my dad wearing himself out over a stupid--"  
  
"Aoko. Aoko," said the Inspector wearily, and then with more force: "AOKO!"  
  
"--with a lead pipe-- what?" Both faces turned at the same time to regard Nakamori quizzically.  
  
"STOP it." Her father harrumphed, shoving his hands back into his pocket as Conan bit back a snort. "You're embarrassing me."  
  
"Oh. Um. Sorry... Ran-chan, is this your Conan-kun?" Both pairs of eyes fixed on Conan in turn, and he fought a very un-Shinichi-like desire to hide behind Nakamori.  
  
"Yes, it is," Ran answered, perfect comportment despite the situation. Well, maybe it was because of the situation, Conan amended. She was, after all, getting very used to seeing him around these kinds of places.  
  
"Conan-kun, have you seen Sonoko anywhere? We were supposed to meet--" Ran checked her watch. "--a while ago, but she's late..."  
  
"It's probably the crowd," Aoko reassured her new friend, waving a hand dismissively. "Kuroba-kun is super late too, but I'm not worried because--"  
  
Past the area of benches where the group stood, a narrow, barred sidewalk kept pedestrians from testing their luck against three lanes of traffic. From the far side of that divide, from the sidewalk in front of a storefront with a large clock whose hands were just edging toward two o'clock, an almost uncreditably loud call interrupted Aoko mid-sentence:  
  
"NAKAMORI-SAN!"  
  
Aoko jumped from her seat and spun around; her father beside her looked up sharply, both of them - seemingly by instinct - pinning their attention on the high school boy in black gakuran uniform who stood with both hands cupped around his mouth as he continued to shout.  
  
"SORRY I'M LATE! I'LL BE RIGHT THERE!"  
  
"Ahhh, that idiot," Aoko grumbled, putting both hands on her hips. "He was supposed to meet me here at noon for the Kid..." She paused, suddenly noticing the dead silence behind her. "...heist?"  
  
"Aoko, please don't move."  
  
"Tou...san?" Aoko asked in confusion, beginning to rotate in place. Sudden hands - Ran's, Conan's, her father's, and even a random Task Force member's - held her rigidly in place. Beginning to panic, Aoko queried them all, voice rising in apprehension. "Um, everyone? Let go of me ple~ease?"  
  
"We will in a moment, Nakamori-san," Conan said brusquely, releasing his hold on her calves and backing up to get a better vantage point. Well.  
  
On the back of Aoko's blousey school uniform, perched happily between her shoulderblades, a featherlight dove sat, waiting for movement from any of the gathered humans. Looking intelligently from one to the other of them, the dove fixed her gaze on the children who had pushed through the perimeter set up by Nakamori's officers and cooed happily, a warm trilling noise deep in her throat.  
  
Aoko froze, chills inching slowly up her back. "Daaaaad...is there...a bird...on my back?"  
  
"A very small one," Nakamori confirmed, eyeing the bird - more specifically, the bird's burden - warily. Held delicately in the bird's beak was a small loop of thin pink ribbon, about as big around as a woman's bracelet. And at the bottom-most point of that loop, fastened with silver filigree, was the biggest black pearl, short of the Suzuki Black Star, that any of them had ever seen.  
  
Conan's attention, meanwhile, was fixed on not only the pearl, but also the small roll of paper clipped, messenger-pigeon style, to the dove's leg.  
  
Ran, standing in front of Aoko and holding on to her new friend's hands with both of her own, chanced a peek over Aoko's slightly shorter shoulder. When she saw the bird she squeaked and hid from it, using Aoko as a shield.  
  
"Mouri-san," Aoko complained. Ran shook her head fervently.  
  
"Don't move! Don't move!"  
  
The whole tableau stood, frozen stock-still, for several moments. The hush began to spread to the crowd, passed by word of mouth from the front rows back to those who couldn't see for themselves.  
  
And eventually, someone had to break it.  
  
"Come here!" Conan made a grab for Ayumi's shoulder as she walked past him, but missed, and the little girl came to a stop right behind Aoko, both hands stretched upward, palms open. "Come sit here!"  
  
Ran and Aoko held their collective breath. The dove burbled softly, a long chuckling note that sounded remarkably like the murmur of the stream they'd been beside earlier; then it riffled its wings in a flurry of white and hopped almost primly onto the little girl's hands. "Oooooo," said the bird with avian smugness.  
  
"OOOOHH," said Genta and Mitsuhiko; Ayumi said nothing, but stood stock-still with a grin of absolute delight on her face.  
  
The Inspector and Conan both approached, hands outstretched; the bird's cooing turned to an irate squawk as it mantled its wings, and the little girl looked at them reproachfully. "STOPPIT. You're scaring it." Truthfully, it didn't seem so much frightened as quite content to remain where it was; it settled down again, allowing Conan to stroke it's breastfeathers with a fingertip... but turning its head quite pointedly when he attempted to take the pearl.  
  
Ran hung back, but Aoko made an attempt as well; the dove accepted her careful headscratch as its just due, but once again turned away before she could slip a finger into the loop of ribbon. "Kaito-kun!" she snapped out impatiently. "You know doves-- Kaito?" Aoko looked back towards the road.  
  
"Over here~" A tap on Aoko's opposite shoulder turned her around abruptly. Kaito stood beside her, bouncing a little where he stood, cheerful as anything. "Doves?"  
  
"This one!" Ayumi said, holding the bird up toward Kaito. The dove bobbed in her hands, but held her perch easily enough, preening her feathers. The pearl, its ribbon still held at the back of her beak, slid silently across her feathers, briefly pressing them down like a palm across thick comforters as it went.  
  
Kaito leaned down to peer at the dove, who didn't seem to notice him - at least, until he edged closer, his head coming within eighteen inches of her position on Ayumi's upreached palms. Then in a flutter of strongly flapping white feathers, she launched herself at his face, beating wings against his temples, shrieking in alarm. In Ayumi's palms, instinctively drawn back to her chest as the bird flew away, lay the pearl and the note, neither one of them harmed.  
  
Conan watched Kaito intensely as the magician batted small airborne down feathers away from his face. Spitting one out and pulling a face, he glanced briefly up to the tree where the escaped dove sat, huffy and smug, looking down on the whole assembly, then back down to Aoko, the crestfallen Ayumi, and the rather furious Nakamori. Kaito shifted awkwardly, blushing slightly.  
  
"Um?"  
  
"Ah le le le, at least we have the note and the pearl!" Conan chimed in, overcutting Nakamori's growing rumble of displeasure, as he lifted both items carefully from Ayumi's grasp.  
  
"We do, Conan-kun," Ran agreed, looking with concern from the dove in the tree to Kaito. "But I thought Nakamori-san said that you were good with birds, Kuroba-kun?"  
  
Kaito just pointed at the dove. "Did that look like she liked me?"  
  
"She?" Ran pursed her lips in thought, and Conan, on the other side of Kaito from her, did the same.  
  
"So convenient that the note fell off of her leg right then," Ai murmured as she crossed the circle, between the three of them, headed from her prior perch on the bench towards the water fountain behind the main bulk of the Task Force. Only Conan paid her any mind, and that much was to beam innocently at her. Ai rolled her eyes and continued on.  
  
The pearl was handed off to one of the Task Force members, who held it carefully with cotton gloves and a gently firm hand. Meanwhile, Nakamori unrolled the note to reveal its message, accompanied this time not by a quoted passage but instead by Kid's trademark caricature. It had a big heart next to it, and four words of text.  
  
 _Name and identification, miss._  
  
The officer read the message out loud; "Miss?" snorted Nakamori, glancing around at the members of the appropriate gender. One corner of the man's mouth quirked up ever so slightly, and he crossed his arms with exaggerated impatience. "Well, ladies? What're you waiting for? Let's see 'em."  
  
His daughter was the first to catch on; she snorted (the sound was remarkably similar to her father's) and pulled out her wallet. "Nakamori Aoko, student," she said crisply, tugging her ID out and brandishing it between two fingers. "And you've met Mouri-san and Ayumi-chan and-- Ai, isn't it?" She raised an eyebrow. "Ladies?" she echoed her father.  
  
The other three looked at one another; Ran reached into her own bag, and Ayumi (after looking blank for a second) produced her Shonen Tantei badge. Ai frowned briefly, slipping her hand into her pocket and extracting a small ivory-colored wallet.  
  
 _Hup hup hyup!_ On the third beat of this unconventional count, the little pink capsule in Mouri Ran's purse, nestled by chance directly on top of her wallet, cracked open and released a familiar pink gas with the speed and pressure that came from tight containment. Nakamori, long used to the tactic, got a cloth in front of his mouth quickly enough to prevent most of the gas's effects. Aoko was similarly prepared.   
  
Ayumi was not; neither were Genta and Mitsuhiko. Ran, however, froze as the hissing pink clouds billowed up, eyes huge, shocked into immobility--  
  
"IT'S HIM! HE DID IT AGAIN, LIKE WITH THE PEARL! _GET HIM!"_ roared Nakamori through the mist; all around them the crowd screamed in excitement and panic, and with a thunder of combat boots, the Kaitou Kid Task Force charged directly towards Mouri Ran in a direct attempt to Dogpile On The Bandit.  
  
Conan (who had also clapped a hand over nose and mouth in instinctive reaction) let out a muffled shout and tried to move in; fortunately for his health, a hand came out of the mist and shoved him backwards. By the time he had regained his balance, it was far too late to intervene. Far too late for the Task Force, actually...  
  
Not for nothing had Mouri Ran placed within the topmost ranks of her competition levels, achieving a respectable _dan_ and a name for herself within the karate community. She trained regularly; she had for years, and on more than one occasion it had come in very handy during her father's investigations. Now, with a large crowd of uniformed bodies quite literally coming at her from all sides, instinct and training took over and she laid into them with enough skill to gladden any martial arts movie fan's heart.  
  
The first few went down, gasping but not unconscious; their padded suits protected them well enough to prevent that. The second wave of attackers (who were wondering why the hell things were going so pear-shaped this time) attempted to lock onto the young woman's arms and legs in anchor-fashion, dragging her off-balence; she retaliated by keeping herself moving fast enough that this was not a possibility, or at least not yet-- as their bruised jaws and stomaches could attest. By the time _they_ were flat on the grass, the third wave was moving in and it was looking like sheer mass would win the day, despite Ran's skill.  
  
Conan, bouncing desperately in sheer rage and dismay, was shouting at the top of his lungs: "STOP, STOP, STOP! That's not him! STOP--"  
  
No good; swearing, he flicked his watch open and armed it.  
  
 _Now that's not good,_ Kaito frowned, noting Conan's readiness. Of course, the whole situation wasn't intended either - the Kid had really, somehow, failed to account for the Task Force's hair-trigger response habits. Not that watching Ran wasn't impressive - but the poor girl was going to get seriously hurt in the next few seconds, and it would be their fault. So Kaito took two steps back, bent to grasp a downed officer's nightstick, and ran forward. One long stride, foot planted firmly on the seat of the nearby park bench that had started all of this. A second stride, on the center railing of that same bench. And a third, in which his feet didn't touch anything at all.   
  
Kaito leaped into the air with his trademark agility, landing lightly - but not as lightly as the Kid might - on the shoulders of a Task Force member who was preparing himself to jump into the fray. A light rap on his cap made sure his attention was held; then a strong leap off his shoulders knocked the officer flat. Power coiled in Kaito's thighs for a backflip that landed him neatly just inside Ran's kicking radius; he launched himself into the air again, flipping over Ran's head and landing on one foot on another officer's shoulder. A little pressure from Kaito's heel on his collarbone - gently, of course - made the man flinch for just enough time to foil his attack. In similar fashion, Kaito began hopping on, jumping over, and in some cases simply stepping from one shoulder to the next congruent shoulder, in a wild pattern that zigzagged him back and forth over the center of the dogpile, where Ran - aided by the delays and distractions he was providing - steadily worked to fell the third wave of Task Force members.  
  
*  
  
 _...son of a bitch. It's_ _ **him**_ _._  
  
The epithet, even mentally expressed, carried no overtones of either anger or triumph; instead there was only a kind of shocked recognition, like coming suddenly upon a familiar face in a jet-black room. 'Face', of course, was entirely inappropriate; Kid had to be wearing a disguise-- no wonder 'Kaito' (hah!) had hung back from the crowd. His moves were totally unmistakable-- not just the acrobatics but the casual, flippant disregard of both gravity and common sense. From his perch on the bench beside the sleeping forms of the Shonen Tantei Conan watched in silence as the wildhaired teenager danced across the mass of bodies, managing to avoid causing actual harm while simultaneously disarming, distracting and in general destroying all coherency in the Task Force's attack.  
  
And Ran was kicking some pretty good ass too, actually. At least he thought so; it was kind of hard to tell past the wild tangle of leaping, falling bodies, but she looked like she might even be having fun.  
  
At last there was nothing more than a small knot of upright squadmembers left; the rest had either gotten their jumpsuited selves kicked or punched in uncomfortable places or had had their heads tapdanced on by the disguised Kid (who had just ducked an exhausted swing and then leapfrogged up feet-first onto the unfortunate officer's shoulders.) Conan's eyes narrowed as he steadied his arm, fixing the sights of his watch on his target.  
  
 **"YOU!"**  
  
The word was a shriek of rage-- and it hadn't come from Nakamori. Or at least, not the _right_ Nakamori. All movement froze.  
  
Conan had been peripherally aware of her; she'd dodged behind the bench and had been watching the whole messy debacle, eyes enormous. There had been a lot going on behind those eyes, shock and questions and-- But now the bits and pieces had lined up into a shape of sorts; realization was written large across her face, and like some maurading valkyrie gone Asian, the Inspector's daughter struggled to push her way past the fallen, groaning bodies, absolutely incandescent with fury.   
  
"You're not Kaito, you're _HIM_ _._ **WHAT'VE YOU DONE WITH KAITO-KUN?!?"**  
  
Unflappable, Kid danced from one officer's shoulders to another, then actually bounced off of Ran's outstretched leg, which dipped her attack into a lower plane as she swung it around....right into the jaw of the officer on whose back Kaito now perched to address Aoko with a laughing tone. "Tucked him into a closet somewhere!" He leapt up, heels tucked close under himself to clear an officer's determined grab. "Whoops! No, Aoko, what do you think?"  
  
Launching a bellow that rivaled her father's best, Nakamori Aoko tried to reach the thief with hands that promised a very ugly, very final finalé should she actually make contact.  
  
The odds of that chance coming to pass were varied, depending on whom you would have asked. Nakamori Ginzo was too busy trying to grab her and keep her clear from the brawl to think about whether she would have actually been able to succeed or not. Mouri Ran was, frankly, _way_ too busy to care. Haibara Ai, had she seen the attempt, would have surely wagered on the element of chaos inherent in a Task Force dogpile to dissuade Aoko's success.  
  
And Conan? He watched Aoko as she added herself to the fray, now dividing his attention between three targets as he tried, unsuccessfully, to keep a bead on Kid with his watch.  
  
Slowly, eventually, through the force of exhaustion, the fight finally broke up. And as it did, Task Force members slinking away from Ran and Kaito, trying to avoid their attention as they dragged themselves, or their friends, out of range, an informal halo of open ground spread around the pair. Ran, breathing heavily, stood with one shoulder to Kaito's; they weren't quite back to back, but faced the group of wary Task Force members with an equal measure of caution. Without taking her eyes off of her opponents or breaking her fighting stance, Ran called out to the elder Nakamori with an angry, sharp voice.  
  
"Call off your men, Officer Nakamori! I'm not the Kaitou Kid!"  
  
Beside her, Kaito waited for the decision with light feet, seemingly hovering in place as he hopped from the ball of one foot to the other, maintaining a fidgety, impatiently constant motion that was very like Kuroba Kaito, but not much at all like the Kid.  
  
 _...not at ALL like the Kid, actually,_ thought Conan, watching. Doubt flicked its fins and swam through his mind, disturbing the shocked certainty that had filled it so neatly a moment before. _He acts like Mitsuhiko on a sugar high. Kid-- when he's still, he's_ _still_ _._ Not to mention the thief's usual habit of heading for the high ground, of which there was plenty available: trees, fences, playground equipment, light-poles. For him to take a stand in a ring of police officers, fallen or not, was out of character.  
  
Unless he was missing something...  
  
Both Nakamoris were staring at the two combatants like cats in front of a particularly interesting mouse-hole. "--Kaito?" Her eyes were still full of wrath, but uncertainty made her frown. "I _know_ you're not the Kid," she said, jerking her chin at Ran, "but... fine. FINE. Prove to me--" (and this time she glared at Ran's fellow battler) "--that you're Kaito-kun."  
  
"Two Wednesdays ago, your skirt flipped up when I was chasing you around the classroom - well, you were supposed to be chasing me - anyway, they were blue with polkadots." He smiled, crossing his arms across his chest - but not _quite_ so overconfident that he didn't send a glance in the Inspector's direction, wary of his reaction to this somewhat controversial proof.  
  
Aoko flushed and crossed her arms; beside her, her father sighed and developed a pained look on his harried face. "If you're Kaito, what's the first magic trick you ever did for me?" she demanded, jaw set mulishly.  
  
Kaito frowned. _Nice place to drag this out,_ he sighed to himself. "In front of the clock tower. I gave you a rose." His tone was flat; though he'd love to imbue the recollection with attitude and warmth, when facing down Aoko...with that look on her face, a look meant only for _him_...and the tired knowledge that she would never (hopefully) realize how easily her lines of questioning allowed him to decieve her...  
  
Well, he just couldn't muster up the energy.  
  
The look changed, though, from stubborn rage into chagrin... and then into guilt. "Oh. Um. Tou-san--"  
  
The Inspector, though, was eyeing Ran. "You said she's not the Kid. How do you know?" he demanded of his daughter, eyes never leaving the young woman's defiant face.  
  
Aoko sighed and rolled her eyes. "Be _cause,_ Tou-san, we stopped by the ladies' room on the way here, and I really don't think the Kid's good enough with disguises to fake THAT." In the center of the scene, Ran made a muffled squawk, and this time Aoko's look of guilt had two targets. "Sorry, Mouri-kun," she said apologetically; and then, a little quieter, "...sorry, Kaito-kun. That was really stupid of me."  
  
Kaito just shrugged and smiled at her, passing the whole incident off silently. There really wasn't anything to say.  
  
 _Someday she'll kick your head in,_ Kid chuckled in the back of Kaito's head.  
  
Not today, Kaito mused back at him. Today, she still thinks she can trust me.  
  
 _But she_ _can,_ Kid responded, sounding genuinely puzzled. _It's_ _me_ _she'll have problems with._  
  
Kaito dismissed the phantom, letting the thief recede further into the back of his mind. Clearing his throat, he raised one hand tentatively, until it caught Inspector Nakamori's attention.  
  
" _What?_ " the man barked.  
  
"With respect, Sir," Kaito offered, smiling guilelessly, "I think we've all just played right into Kid's hands. He's certainly gone by now, or in the crowd, which I guess is about the same difference." He looked past the Task Force to the gathered crowd, all of whom had (shockingly) proved smart enough to _stay the hell away_ from Ran's range, and were now hovering indecisively a decent distance away from the group of teens, Task Force members, and the Inspector. Some were beginning to disperse, catching the drift from the Task Force's behavior that there had been some sort of false alarm. At Kaito's words, members of the Task Force looked despondently from him and Ran, to the milling throng, and back again.  
  
One of the squadmembers, Nakamori's second-in-command (what was his name again?) stepped forward, looking a little sheepish past the heel-shaped bruise that now decorated one cheek. "I have to concur, sir; if 1412 was going to show, he would have already." As if the words were a trigger on a gun, the man instinctively looked up at the sky, the trees, any place that could begin raining internationally-recognized Phantom Thieves...  
  
However, Heaven (or Hell, depending on your viewpoint) did not oblige; the officer relaxed slightly, as did a number of his subordinates. Nakamori grunted unhappily and waved at his men to stand down. "S'pose you're right. Goddammit, can't that lunatic _**ever**_ act like a normal criminal?" He stepped forward to where Ran and Kaito still stood (though not too close, just in case; Ran still had that look on her face.) "Are you uninjured, Mouri-san?" The young woman nodded, her posture dropping from defensive back to normal, and certain squadmembers lost a little more of their tension as well.  
  
From his perch on the bench, Conan snapped his watch shut and looked down at the sleeping Shonen Tantei; Genta let out a sluggish snore and snuggled close to Mitsuhiko's shoulder. He'd be drooling on the other boy's sleeve next-- "Ahh, Nakamori-keibu? Could somebody take my friends home?" He pointed at the sleeping kids, and several of the squadmembers moved in at the Inspector's terse orders, followed by Ai. She gave Conan a narrow-eyed look as she passed, but followed along docilely enough.  
  
All around, the crowd was breaking up into talkative groups and excited couples. A few cameras flashed; there was laughter and a few disappointed catcalls, but for the most part the show was over.  
  
...except that Conan was watching Kuroba Kaito with narrowed, considering eyes.  
  
Expression brightening, Kaito walked (though, as his normal walk was more elastic than nearly anyone else's, it would be equally fair to say he _bounced_ ) closer to Conan and crouched down in front of the bench, coming to just under eye-level with the boy.  
  
 _You can't be serious,_ Kid grumbled, eyeing Conan's very intelligent gaze with apprehension. _Nobody's that stupid to think that_ _you'd_ _think he's just a--_  
  
"Kid!" Kaito grinned up at his new conversational partner. "Aren't you going home with your friends?"  
  
 _Mmmmno, I don't think so._ "No," said the boy calmly; "They'll get taken to Agasa-sensei's house and when they wake up they'll be cranky. _And_ loud. I'd rather stay here--" He glanced sideways; Ran was talking to Aoko, and in a flurry of agitated lateness Sonoko had just rushed up; from the sound of things, ice cream and explanations were very possibly in the offing. "--and go with Ran-neechan. Wouldn't you?" The wary, smiling stare was bright behind the boy's glasses. "I heard Nakamori-keibu's daughter call you Kaito-kun; I'm Edogawa Conan. You were pretty good, trying to save Ran-neechan; where'd you learn to do that?"  
  
"Here and there," Kaito laughed, standing with a small stretch. "Aoko taught me, mostly, always chasing me around with her mop. But I think I'll be going. You and Ran-neechan have fun, okay?" He turned, scratching at his unruly hair, and called across to get Aoko's attention. "You ready to go?"  
  
 _.....mop?_  
  
Aoko was looking a little torn; she'd obviously been invited along, but she waved at her new companions and turned back to Kaito and her father, who had that pre-paperwork look of gloom that he always did just after a Kid encounter. "Yeah, coming. But you owe me an ice cream, Kaito-kun." Smoothing her hair back, she looked at the boy on the bench. "Oh, you're that Edogawa kid, aren't you? Tou-san told me about you, and Mouri-kun said you'd be in the middle of all this." She gave Kaito an affectionate look, still tinged with a little guilt from earlier. "Found somebody your own age to play with, Kaito-kun?"  
  
Kid glanced from Aoko to Conan and back again.  
  
Kaito laughed. "Hahah, very funny, Aoko! Very funny."  
  
Conan merely grinned, all intelligence and isn't-he-cute. But his eyes had a little flash of irony somewhere back behind the smile. "Is she your girlfriend, Kaito-kun?" he asked brightly, hopping down from the bench.  
  
Kaito twitched, half his smile and one whole shoulder falling as though his puppet strings had been cut. Before the expression of dismay took over his whole face, he rallied his grin and smiled blankly at Conan. "Don't worry, Aoko," he said, keeping his plastic smile fixed on the kid in front of him, while the Kid in the back of his head snickered in amusement at the whole act, "Conan-kun's too young to know that was a rude question to ask someone he's just met."  
  
Ran, however, was not too young, and had just walked forward in time to catch the whole exchange. "CONAN-kun! You apologize right now!" she scolded him; behind her, Sonoko put her hands on her hips and tsked in that annoying way of hers. "I'm sorry; for somebody so bright, he can be a real pest sometimes," the young woman said in exasperation.  
  
 _Thanks ever so much, Ran._ The faux gradeschooler hung his head in equally-false contrition. "Sorry," he muttered. Then he looked up at Ran and Sonoko. "Why's it rude, Ran-neechan? I mean, if he gave her a rose..."  
  
"Better quit while you're ahead, shrimp," advised Sonoko over Ran's shoulder. And then she blinked. "Wait, he gave you a _rose?_ Really?" The look that the zaibatsu-born young woman turned towards Kaito held a lot more interest than it had a moment before; there was nothing Sonoko loved better than the smell of romance.  
  
As Aoko bristled and huffed beside him, Kaito had to think for a moment. He wasn't about to dismiss or minimize the significance of the rose - especially since he couldn't easily do so, considering that roses were exponentially harder to conceal than carnations, whose ragged, thin petals nevertheless stood up to abuse and the touch of skin oils much better than a rose's satin-smooth, easy-to-wilt petals did.  
  
But to get into this here? At a _heist?_ With a girl he didn't even - oh, wait. There was his out. Grinning, Kaito turned to face Sonoko squarely, taking her hand and bowing to kiss it. "A good magician can leave much of his tricks up to the will of the magic itself," he purred, before reaching into his cuff and tugging out the stem he found there.  
  
 _Not a rose, not a rose, not a rose,_ Kaito intoned silently. Kid, feeling benevolent, complied.  
  
Sonoko fluttered girlishly as Kaito presented the carnation to her, a white one that had been dyed a deep sunset orange that faded into yellow at the very root of its petals. "Kuroba Kaito, Miss...?"  
  
"S-Suzuki," Sonoko managed. "But Sonoko-chan to _you._ "  
  
"LET'S GO, KAITO." With a firm grip on his elbow, Aoko bodily towed Kaito away from Sonoko and out of the park, heading toward the sidewalk that Kaito had entered from. "Bye, Mouri-kun! I'll call you soon!"  
  
"Bye, Nakamori-san," Ran waved back, a little distracted, before wheeling on Conan. "Look what you started!"  
  
He allowed a little whine to creep into his voice as she very firmly latched onto one hand, marching him towards the park exit. "I didn't _mean_ to, Ran-neechan. I just wanted to know."  
  
"No excuses," she said crossly, her cheeks still flushed. "Men! Boys. Whatever. I swear, you can't trust them to act their age no matter how old they are! Now behave yourself, okay? Nakamori-keibu'll want to talk to you tomorrow sometime, but please do _not_ find any dead bodies, phantom thieves, missing jewels or murderers on the run until we get home, hm?"  
  
"I'll do my best," said Conan meekly.   
  
_No promises._  
  
Following the remainder of the crowd, they left the park. Behind them, Sonoko trailed along happily, sniffing her carnation with a delighted smile on her face. If she loved the scent of romance, she loved it even better when it was tailored to fit her personal preferences.  
  
* * *   
  
 


	3. "Prank, chat, lifeline"

**_Chapter Three:_** ** _"Prank, chat, lifeline"_**  
 _Soundtrack -  
first half:_ _[Meet Me At My Window by Jack's Mannequin](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV6A4mZ5L7M). Loop-one is recommended.   
second half: [What Happens Tomorrow by Duran Duran](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ2lIgDLx4Q)_ _. Loop one is recommended for this as well._  
  
* * *  
  
Conan's homework had been completed since about two hours after school let out on Friday, and one of those hours had been taken up by the trip home. Saturday night, while Ran worked over her own (considerably more difficult) homework and Mouri dozed in front of the television, Conan's time was his own. Normally he tried to get a bit of work done - researching the latest findings from newspapers, broadcast station sites, some university networks, as well as more than a few FTP-based archives of digitized microfiche readers, which he was slowly working his way through. But the day had been so full of work already - and so much stress, watching (and worrying about) the fight in the park - he felt he deserved some play time. So he headed to [Welcome Holmes](http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WelcomeHolmes/). As the home page loaded, however, Conan frowned. He'd been meaning to send an email to Heiji for a while. Conan shifted over to his email window, opened a new message, and began typing. His keystroke scrambler encoded the signals of everything that he wrote, but the message showed up clearly in the browser window.

 _Heiji -  
  
Just bitching tonight. Today was a disaster - Kid had his total way with us and I had to watch Ran get dogpiled on by the whole stupid TF. And then she went and made friends with Nakamori's kid, and her (Aoko's) friend took a shine to me, which was probably Kid, but by that point .... eh. Wasn't worth it today. Small stuff. I'll get him on a bigger case.  
  
That wasn't even what I wanted to tell you about. Just this troll on WH. There's just been these...immature, for the lack of a better word, posts showing up. He's going all over the place, hitting a bunch of different threads. Keeps making really basic observations, simplistic, feels like he's belaboring a kindergartener's point. It's not just me who're annoyed w him(/her), but he hasn't gotten banned yet (though really, should be.) His screen name keeps changing subtly too - so maybe he is getting banned and keeps on rejoining, but then why would he be allowed to join? - right now it's 1nb!u. One way or another, he's minor enough (and not actually breaking TOS), so people mostly ignore him, but I just can't. Don't know why. But for some reason, he's pissing me off, especially since over the last couple days, he's been sending these private messages/emails. About ready to tell him "just fucking google it already", really.  
  
Thing is.... it seems like the guy's driving at something, and he's not as stupid as he seems, I swear it, he seems more contrived than that; every time he seems just about to tip over the edge into absolutely unsalvageable uselessness, he'll come up with some really profound observation or conclusion that clearly requires that he's done a deep reading of the texts to _make _that conclusion. And the real kicker is he does all this while sympathizing with moriarty. Which just_ confuses _me -- this is a_ Holmes _board.  
  
Ehhhh. He's just a troll but he keeps sticking in my head for some reason, I can't put my finger on it though. Use my login and poke around on WH when you get a chance, see what you think too.  
  
-sh1_

  
  
 _Eh. Good enough._ Conan sent the email, and his browser took him back to his inbox. A pair of new emails sat at the top of his inbox.  
  
 _welcomeholmes group - Welcome Holmes ML - 1 new message in 1 topic  
  
welcomeholmes group - Welcome Holmes PM - 1 new inbox message_  
  
Conan opened the top one first. It was nothing important - another kid who learned about Holmes from American public television. Sometimes Conan really wanted to strangle - or at least kick a soccer ball at - whoever came up with Wishbone.  
  
The second one was from "1nb!u", and considerably more interesting.  
  
 _Here's a joke for you.  
  
What did Moriarty say to Holmes at the clocktower?  
  
Give up?  
  
"My dear man, stop loop-in' around the tower in a helicopter like that, you're too hard to aim at!"_  
  
There was, as usual, no signature. However - for the first time - the little green bubble next to "1nb!u"'s screen name was lit - indicating he was online in the Yahoo chat.  
  
He debated deleting the message into oblivion. He considered replying with something scathing and unchildlike-- after all, online he could be himself, so long as he made sure there were enough levels of protection between keyboard and destination. And _then_ he stared at the email, at the words 'clocktower' and 'helicopter' and began, very quietly, to swear beneath his breath in language that would have made Nakamori Ginzo take notes for future reference.  
  
Apparently Kudo Shinichi wasn't the only person online enjoying trading one mask for another tonight.  
  
He _could_ just ignore it, couldn't he? Oh sure he could, and then he'd be all set to change back into his old self, announce the Black Organization's existance to the world, and fly around the moon in a circle with all the rest of the winged pigs. Riiiiiiight. With a mixture of dread and curiosity, Conan clicked his way into a chatwindow with 1nb!u.  
  
 _evning,_ 1nb!u wrote.   
  
_Hello_ , Dductshn answered warily, frowning at the window.  
  
 _quack quack? what have u deduc(k)ed?_  
  
 _I've been thinking about clocktowers and helicopters_ , said Dductshn, wondering if it was possible to somehow electrocute 1nb!u by the power of his mind. Probably not, or everybody would've been doing it.  
  
 _i've bn thnkn bout copters n cloth,_ 1nb!u replied. _but tht dsn' tell u much unlss u kno how 2 stop th hands._  
  
Behind Conan's face, Kudo Shinichi did a truly magnificent headdesk. _Yeah? Stop the clock and get the diamonds, right?_ Sarcasm didn't cross through chatwindows unless you made it happen; and he needed to keep things polite until he was certain, absolutely certain that this was who he thought it was. _Save the cheerleader and save the world?_ He hoped the other had access to American tv downloads.  
  
 _funny u mention tht,_ 1nb!u sent, fingers clicking quickly across the keys in shorthand that nobody else knew he knew how to write. In the dark room, the glare of the old CRT monitor flashed off his monocle and reflected faintly on the classroom blackboard in front of the desk he sat at. Smiling, he continued quickly, then hit send, preempting the flashing pencil icon that meant Dductshn had already been typing. _ddn' pick u 4 a comix buff_  
  
 _You'd be surprised. What about you? What're you a fan of?_ Conan tapped back, irritated. The other was  fast. Quietly he clicked onto a preset link, opening up a window and adding in information that would ultimately (if things went right) tell him 1nb!u's computer's IP address, or at the very least what server he was on. It was a start.  
  
 _oh u're funny,_ 1nb!u replied, _but its lss funny whn i thnk u actully thnk im tht stupid._  
  
The IP-seek utility already had an answer for Conan: 1nb!u was accessing the web from a concealed IP within the main university network, which included its wireless network. A wireless network that spanned a good third of the city. As if that wasn't bad enough, an additional message was included under the "Comments" section:  
  
 _Dn't try tht again, sk._  
  
Well. It had gotten him what he wanted-- confirmation of just who he was talking to. Not that there was much doubt by then, but still.  
  
 _Stupid, no. Sort of surprised you're such a Moriarty fan, tho, we don't get a lot of those. Takes one to know one, I guess. And you've been asking some, heh, really elementary questions in WH. Figured you'd know the competition better than that._ Glancing at the IP tracer window, he smiled a little grimly and added a comment of his own; Kid could've left instead of answering back, so he supposed it was only polite to acknowledge that.  
  
 _-shrug- Fine, 1412._  
  
Meanwhile, in the main window, 1nb!u had replied.  
  
 _thnk u misundrstood. i_ _got_ _my compettion, rght here._  
  
Kid sat back from his keys, smiling at the screen, despite how childish it all was. This was _fun_ \- and he didn't really have much to fear from Conan, anyway. They weren't on a heist. Things were different, then. Now.... Kid added another line of text, tapping the send button with flourish.  
  
 _n 2 ansr ur q, n ur implid q, im not a moriarty fan, tht was bait (whch u bit). im a lupin fan. & a night baron fan._  
  
Conan snorted; he couldn't help it. 'Competition', well-- that was (almost) flattering. _Was_ flattering, actually. And of course he'd bitten the bait; what else was he supposed to do, ignore it? He leaned over his laptop, chin on hand, a very unchildlike smirk curving his mouth. _Glad you've got taste, then_ , was all he said; and _If Holmes'd fought Lupin instead of Moriarty, I wonder if we'd be having this conversation?_ He hit the send key with a little more emphasis than was necessary, and winced at the sound that it made.  
  
 _no,_ Kid sent, grinned, and waited just that half beat more to make Conan think that it was all he was going to say, before adding:  
  
 _if L hd fought H, u wldn't wnt 2 tlk about it bc ur a sore lsr_  
  
 _Wrong_ , typed Conan simply. _I'm a Lupin fan too._ And he grinned.  
  
Kid sat back from the keys, staring at the screen. _Is that...._  
  
No. There was no way that Conan - Shinichi - had meant it like that. But suddenly, it was hard to find the playful feeling he'd had just a few moments before. He shook his head, shaking it off, and lifted his hands to the keys again. But they hovered, still, and then fell back to his lap. He tried again, and again found himself hesitating, completely unable to decide what to say.  
  
 _Your problem,_ Kuroba helpfully pointed out, with a mental smirk, _Is that you have no experience dealing with people on an individual basis. An audience is easy. A friend is hard._  
  
Friend? Kid all but glared at his own reflection in the glow of the CRT screen. "Edogawa is not my friend," he insisted to the empty classroom.  
  
 _Kudo is,_ Kuroba said gently.  
  
And Kid sat staring at the screen.  
  
* * * * *  
  
It was halfway through the next week and almost at the beginning of recess when Conan got the first text. He'd set his cellphone on vibrate (Sensei disapproved of phones in class, and while she was realistic enough to know that the kids were going to sneak them in, anything playing the latest anime theme-song would get confiscated immediately) and felt it go off in his backpocket just as he sent a soccer-ball Mitsuhiko's way. He'd been attempting to teach the freckled boy a few of the tricks towards aim and direction, not the fancy ones but the kind that worked on developing coordination; and Mitsuhiko had been eating them up.  
  
Waving the phone at his friends, he stepped back into the shade of a playground tree, flipping it open without much worry. _Ran, maybe... Heiji? Why's Heiji texting me in the middle of the day?_ A little puzzled, he hit the center button.  
  
From: Heiji  
[06 2597 3428]  
13:06:10  
 _Call me._  
  
 _Okay. Got to be a case, then, he wouldn't call me during school if it wasn't._ With an internal flicker of excitement _(thank god, anything's better than this)_ he clicked the appropriate buttons and heard the line cut through. Reception was decent out in the school yard, and with a small portion of his attention on the Shonen Tantei, Conan waited for an answer.  
  
The line clicked as it connected. "Kudo? Whassup?" Heiji sounded amiable but confused, and a rustle in the background preceded another question. "It's th' middle of the day! What're you doin' outta school?"  
  
......?? Conan scowled at the receiver. "Heiji? Didn't you just text me?" he said, hand cupped over the phone. Off in the distance, Mitsuhiko had just put the soccer ball through the middle of a girl's jump-rope game.  
  
"Why would I'a texted you when we're both in the middle'v class? Look, I gotta go, but if you got somethin' to say give me a call later, and we'll talk then, kay? Seeya."  
  
Click.  
  
Conan stared at the open phone's screen for several minutes, still scowling, though this time in perplexity; in fact, it wasn't until the soccer ball smacked him in the ankles that he closed it and put it away.  
  
That was Clue Number One.  
  
Just under a week later, a pair of texts rattled into Conan's phone in quick succession.  
  
From: Hakuba Saguru  
[+001 010 75 2233 274466]  
15:43:56  
  
 _Seeking your input on the most recent encounter with KID._  
  
From: Nakamori-keibu  
[03 6846 6946]  
15:44:01  
  
 _1412 is an annoying bastard, isn't he!?!_  
  
Conan stared at his phone. The texts were identified by phone number and caller ID, but he didn't even _have_ either of those numbers in his address book to start with. Besides - the Inspector, _texting_ him?  
  
That was Clue Number Two.  
  
As has been noted in the past by any number of parties both criminal and non, Conan Was Not Stupid. He also Was Not Buying This. Looking like an idiot in front of Heiji'd been annoying, but there was no way he was contacting either Hakuba or Nakamori. Somebody was very successfully yanking his chain.  
  
 _Gee, I wonder who_ _that_ _could be?_ Conan growled at the tiny screen, flicking it with a fingernail. _Right. Let's look at the texts first. 'Call me.' 'Seeking your input on the most recent encounter with KID.' '1412 is an annoying bastard, isn't he!?!' Not much to work with there. So, numbers...The first and third texts were from in-country; the second one was from outside Japan, presumably the UK._ He spent a few moments verifying country and precinct codes as best as was possible with the limited resources he had; they checked out.  
  
 _Wonderful. So unless Heiji's developed spastic amnesia, Hakuba's losing it entirely, and Nakamori's smoking his station's evidence locker contents, I need more than what I've got to get anywhere.  
  
Hmmm._  
  
On a whim, Conan pulled up the text from Heiji and - instead of calling him back - extracted the phone number and saved it as a second contact. He did the same with the other two texts, then compared the results in his phone's address book.  
  
 _Hakuba Saguru_ _  
[+001 010 15 2733 274786]  
  
_ _Hakuba Saguru - false_ _  
[+001 010 75 2233 274466]  
  
_ _Heiji_ _  
[06 2963 4261]  
  
_ _Heiji - false_ _  
[06 2597 3428]_  
  
And, further down,  
  
 _Nakamori-keibu - false_ _  
[03 6846 6946]_  
  
He had no previously saved number to compare Nakamori's information against, but the example of "Heiji"'s and "Hakuba"'s numbers was proof enough. Somehow, the sender had fooled Conan's caller ID - but fooled was the operative word. The texts hadn't been sent from the real numbers. Which meant there really WAS something he was missing.  
  
Recess (the texts had come at recess again; somebody (and 'Nakamori' was right, he really was a bastard) knew enough about Conan's schedule to at least place them at the point in which he'd have the least trouble answering them) was almost over. He tucked the phone back into a pocket and, hours later when he'd finished his homework, pulled it back out. A thought had occurred to him, one touched off by an advertisement viewed on the back of a truck halfway home from school. It'd been simple enough-- the business name spelled out in Romaji, matching up with the numbers on a standard telephone dial or keypad; advertisements had used that trick since the development of the telephone. And now, staring at his own keypad, he wondered at his denseness.  
  
There were alternate combinations, of course; but when you bypassed the location prefix and considered Kid's fondness for Romaji...  
  
Heiji, for instance; he'd have 2963 4261; that worked out to 'bkwr dhat', 'backward hat'. Conan snorted. Nakamori came out to 'ntgonwin' and Hakuba 'rl bad fashion' (Conan barely caught his phone before it hit the carpet, smothering an entirely undignified snicker.) Okay, well, he couldn't disagree with that last one; he just wished he could share the joke with somebody.  
  
As if to answer that silent wish, his phone buzzed in his hand.  
  
From: Ran  
[03 4677 7253]  
18:09:26  
  
 _Hope you've figured it out by now. You know where to find me._  
  
Conan thought for a moment and then smiled wryly; oddly enough, he did. He stared at the number from Ran, worked out the translation ('impssble') and tipped an imaginary hat towards the phone in salute before slipping off to the doubtful privacy of the room he still shared with Mouri, laptop beneath one arm.  
  
*  
  
 _Fancy meeting you here_ typed Dductshn, crosslegged on his futon.  
  
 _evn i can hear how not surprsed u r,_ 1nb!u replied. He was comfortable this evening - more so than felt safe - but his location didn't allow for much skulking or hiding.  
  
 _Yeah, well, can't say you're predictable- you'd take it as an insult anyway. But reliable, suppose so._ Shinichi smiled a little, just the faintest quirk of his lips; but his face was oddly relaxed. Heiji would have poked him with a finger, asking _What's with you, Kudo, you on vacation or what?_ In a way he was, he supposed; on vacation from being Conan.   
  
_predictbly unpredictbl. f im so reliable, whens the next heist?_ He sent it - then wished he hadn't. That was work; this was....not. He sat back from the keys, hoping Conan - Kudo - wouldn't take it there.  
  
On the other end of their rather peculiar line of communication, Shinichi scowled briefly; but before irritation could take over, he typed out rapidly:  
  
 _About half an hour before you get caught. Or not. I'm a detective, not a prophet._ He chuckled, hitting send. It occurred to him briefly that, if Sherlock Holmes  had been up against Arsené Lupin, the inhabitant of 32-B Baker Street would have retired at a much earlier age possibly out of sheer frustration. Or taken to drink.  
  
 _then lets talk about prophecy,_ Kid typed, following an impulse. A hand on his shoulder made him look behind himself. "What're you doing, Kaito?"  
  
"Nothing much, Aoko," he replied lightly, typing a quick _brb_ into the chat window and flicking over to his browser window before the girl could really focus on the text of his chat box. "Talking to a - heh, a friend - and poking at my email. Still haven't heard back from Nagisawa-sensei about the project for fourth period."  
  
" _Yet?_ " Aoko whined. "Sheesh, at this rate he'll tell us about it the day before it's due."  
  
"Sit _down,_ Nakamori-san," rapped the instructor at the front of the cram school classroom. Other students began filing back into the classroom, returning from their break and slotting into their desks in an orderly fashion. Kaito took this moment to kick his heels down from the back of the chair in front of him, returning to a more-or-less upright position as the cram school instructor dimmed the classroom lights and woke up the classroom projector. Clicking over to the appropriate slide of her presentation, she continued with her lecture, covering material at a remarkably fast rate; Kaito and other students clicked away at their keyboards, ostensibly taking notes, though Kaito would have put money that not a one of the laptops in the classroom lacked a silenced chat window just like his.  
  
Turning his attention back to his own chat, Kid tapped out a brisk _back sry_ , then continued the conversation where it had been left off. _so about prophecy._  
  
From his side of the screen Shinichi eyed the words there a little warily. Saying he 'wasn't a prophet' wasn't entirely accurate; the business of a detective wasn't just to solve what _had_ happened, sometimes it was to prevent what was _going_ to happen. But tonight, he wasn't open for business, so to speak; this was time off.  
  
Which was why he typed back: _Going to read my future in the tea leaves? Or are crystal balls more your angle?_ And cocked one eyebrow, amused, as he waited for the answer.  
  
There were a lot of replies Kid could send to that one. In the end, he settled for something of the middle road: _palm rding 2 up close n prsnal? i might shoot u f u let me tht close_  
  
The other eyebrow went up. "Who'd shoot who?" muttered Conan; but it was Shinichi who bit back a laugh and answered. _At least I've got ten extra years on my lifeline._ Sort of, anyway, if the Black Organization didn't bury him or Ai couldn't find a cure. It was, frankly, very weird to type something,  anything about his shrunken state that openly; to joke about it, even. He might say something like that to Heiji or maybe to Agasa, though not to Ai (her sense of humor still needed some work.) But to anyone else, no; it was oddly freeing.   
  
'Odd' being the operative word here.  
  
 _So what would you find if you read my palm?_  
  
Kid smiled and began to type.  
  
 _hm. short life line. starts 2 "early" - ends abruptly.  
  
long head line. goes straight thru ur fate line n keeps goin. heart line's huge but u knew tht i hope  
  
thumb's all bulked up - logic, hre on the middle. n will, here on the thumb pad. see how it's too big fr your hand? big will. i have tht 1 2.  
  
big line on the prcussn of yr hand too - the outside side. base of yr pinky is mercury - after that's mars - after that's luna. head & changeable & intuition; war, determined, anger; luna - moon - chngeable appearnce, cnstnt nature._  
  
Kid pulled his hands back from the keys, looking at what he'd typed; without thought, his right thumb rubbed across the base of his ring finger on the other hand, the point that palmistry names the "mount of Apollo." After a moment, he returned his hands to the keys.  
  
 _tht'll b 3 esy pymnts of 19.99 plz_  
  
Shinichi **stared**. Well; that definitely came under the heading of 'odd'. He found himself staring at his right hand for a long, bemused moment before he caught himself. _Put it on my tab,_ he typed back, intrigued. _I don't know much about palms, just fingerprints. Are you sure you're not reading your own?_ This was getting weirder by the minute.  
  
In the living room, the TV clicked off; he could hear Ran and her father talking, Mouri's sleepy mumble irritated and querulous. He didn't have more than a few minutes left to talk, and it was surprising how much regret accompanied that realization.  
  
 _m' sure,_ Kid typed back, as the classroom lights flickered back on, the instructor directed all the students to put away their laptops, and Aoko poked him insistently in the side in search of his attention, _f it were my palm thered be more crazy._

  
But he hesitated a moment before snapping his laptop lid shut. Another stolen second, the instructor calling out Kaito's name sharply, left one more line for Shinichi's benefit:  
  
 _gtg. ttys._  
  
 _Good night._ Shinichi saw the login blink out before he could hit send, but on an impulse did so anyway. He put the laptop away slowly, methodically, and when Mouri stumbled in he was, to all appearances, asleep and had been so for some time.  
  
Which didn't explain why he lay there for nearly an hour, staring in the fitful light of his alarm-clock at the lines on his palm until his eyes at last closed.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Static from the squadcar fuzzed in Conan's ears where he sat, legs dangling, sideways in the front passenger's seat. The wails of firetrucks told that they were on their way, but from the heavy billows and roils of smoke and the sick, rotten-egg thickness of the air, they were already too late.  
  
It had started out right-- well, right as a heist could go from a police perspective, anyway. The huge bayside convention center that Beika City shared with several smaller neighboring towns had been hosting the sort of thing that made any good detective's hair stand on end (at least, any good detective who had seen 1412 in action): an international gem show/market, full of displays and booths and things that made security guards consider alternative lines of work. There'd been the private auctions and there'd been the public displays. And then there'd been the invitation-only presentations, connoisseurs boasting their prizes for other connoisseurs to view.  
  
Kid must have considered it as his own personal _**Disneyland**_.  
  
Well. Considered, past tense.  
  
Kid pulled the flaps on his glider, scooping air out of his wings to begin a controlled, sharp dive. He spiraled down, following the updraft that had carried him to his high vantage point toward the ground again. The heat of the smoke and fumes rising from the convention center slowed his descent, allowing him time to study the situation on the ground. A cloth held across his mouth made it easier for him to breathe. Evacuation of the gem show crowd was going well - though the convention center would be damaged by the gas leak and subsequent fires, the heavy police presence on site had been able to quickly step in and control the crowd before panic could set in.   
  
The attendance of the show had actually been _decreased_ by his heist announcement; security wasn't about to have any of this "general public" nonsense near the gems, and several less dedicated browsers and collectors decided they'd rather skip the hype than get themselves tangled up in Kid's tomfoolery. But Kid still felt responsible, in an oblique way, for the hardship of the people, guests and gem sellers alike, who trudged out of the building below him, and had decided that - until the Task Force chose to misprioritize their time in such a way that they resumed chasing him while there was still a fire going - he wanted to remain on site and make sure that everything - and everyone - was okay.  
  
" _Okay?_ " Kid muttered to himself, banking the glider toward the northwest extension of the convention center. "'Bout as vague as I can get there, isn't i--"  
  
The words died on his lips as a burst of gas and smoke exploded from the ventilation ducts and skylights of the northwest wing, about halfway down its length. Even as the flare of light died, Kid was plummeting out of the sky on a tangent that would land him in the center of the wing's roof. At the far end, which was actually suspended over the water by a balance system of wired counterweights, a sudden light had flickered into existence - an emergency flashlight, being held - and waved - by someone still inside the building.  
  
*  
  
Conan'd seen the glider-- it was hard to miss, backed by black smoke and highlighted by the emergency lights that'd been directed on the blaze from trucks below. So had Nakamori; and the Inspector had gone all the way from pure creative vulgarity straight over into basic obscenities in his swearing as Kid dove like an albino hawk towards the sudden burst of flame. "WHAT THE (physiologically-impossible-under-any-circumstances) IS THAT BASTARD _DOING?!?"_ screamed the officer as the glider's frame banked at a steep arc.  
  
"Landing," answered Conan grimly, now perched on the hood of the squadcar; Agasa stood beside him, face pale. "Didn't you see? There's somebody up there."  
  
The weak flicker of light sparked again, dim but unmistakable as a match in a coalmine; and Nakamori snatched his radio up from beside the boy's feet. "NAKAMORI HERE. COUNT OFF!" he roared at his men.  
  
 _"886 here, Tabuto--"  
"931, Yamamoto, I've got 317 with me, Kawahara--"  
"427 here, Shirojima--"_  
  
The names counted off, slowed down, slid into silence; Nakamori made a second call, made a third...  
  
Four men were missing and unaccounted for. He stared at the flames and gouts of smoke as if sheer willpower could produce his men for a long moment before turning back to Agasa and Conan. "Stay here," he growled before hurrying off towards one of the firetrucks, speaking rapidly into his radio.  
  
*  
  
The heat was intense. No, that didn't even begin to describe it. The heat was suffocating, and it cloyed to his body like coarse wool pressed across his nose and mouth, making it hard to breathe, making the breaths he did take scrape and burn his throat and lungs. The disgusting smell of rotten eggs, which at this temperature and proximity was more of a taste than a scent, cloyed to his palate, gagging him. The smoke and debris in the air brought tears to his eyes, and sweat quickly slicked his whole body, glueing the suit to him, clamming up his fingers inside his gloves, sticking his hair to his face.  
  
Kid landed ungracefully, swatted to the rooftop by a gust of roiling, heated air behind him which flattened his glider against his back as it drove him down. He absorbed the impact as best he could, but was still driven to one knee; the jolt knocked his monocle from the sweat-slicked bridge of his nose, and he caught it, saving it from shattering on the ground by a narrow margin. The glider was a liability, still catching air and pulling against his back; Kid collapsed it, binding his cape tight against his back, over the glider frame, in a roughly backpack shape. Then, tucking the monocle into one of his many pockets and tying a large silk scarf across his nose and mouth as protection from the fumes, Kid took off running, a fleet white sprinter chasing flames down the length of the convention center's roof.  
  
Nearly to the end of the building's wing, Kid pulled up abruptly, hopping to a stop and studying the roof below his feet intently. A solid kick to the ceiling lent some information; running back several paces, a similar impact produced a markedly different sort of thud. Kid returned to the first point, digging in his suit jacket's inner pockets for flashpaper and tools. The low-blast plastic explosive that he'd brought along to pop the locks on the gems' display cases came in handy now as he pressed it to the fastenings of the ventilation system's exhaust pipe. Flashpaper ignited it. The muted explosion rang loudly against the hollow ductwork; Kid yanked the vent cover off and slithered into the vent without a moment's hesitation. Once inside, he began to navigate by feel, temperature, and instinct.  
  
*  
  
 _Be predictable this once, Kid; monitor the police frequency like a nice intelligent thief, you've done it before right in front of me..._ Conan fumbled briefly with the radio. It had been Agasa who had procured it from who-knows-where, but it had been Conan who'd remembered several instances of mimicked voices and misdirected squadmembers.  
  
There, he had it; that was Nakamori, snapping out orders in a voice that was oddly clipped, oddly controlled. He didn't sound like himself without the profanity, somehow. _Right._ He tapped the mic to clear it. "Kid? Are you there? Are you listening?"  
  
A very loud clang rattled over the air, followed by a muffled curse and a series of lesser clangs. "I wonder if I should acknowledge that I can hear you, Tantei-kun. You did, after all, just make me drop my screwdriver down an eight foot vertical chute."  
  
 _Aack._ There was a sudden thunderous silence as Nakamori and his men all shut up at once. _Remember, you're_ _seven_ _. Be Conan, not Shinichi._ "Sorry, Kid-san," said Conan contritely in his best awesomely-bright-seven-year-old voice, hoping like hell Kid'd get the idea. "What're you doing? We thought you were leaving. Is anybody else up there with you?"  
  
There was a pause. When Kid spoke again, it was with a more aloof - or maybe just distracted, or concentrating - voice. "Tantei-kun, perhaps you'd better let me speak with one of the grown ups. Is the Inspector there?"  
  
"Nakamori here," growled the Inspector almost civilly; you could very nearly hear him throttling down the instincts that told him to go after his quarry. "Just-- supposing I give you the benefit of the doubt here--" (and he audibly gritted his teeth) "--what. Are. You. Doing?"  
  
"At the moment, getting a lot of dust and soot all over my second-best suit. I think the sanitation inspector would have something to say about this ductwork," Kid commented blithely, seeming not to hear the way that the entire Task Force froze, and Nakamori began growling, halfway through his statement. "However," Kid added, "In a few minutes I will be rescuing several of your men from the suspended wing of this rather distressed building. That is, of course..." He paused, letting the open line pop and crackle through static, obviously waiting for Nakamori to provide the conclusion to his statement.  
  
And Conan, very quietly began tapping on the mike again: _Tap-tap-tap. (pause.) Tap. (pause.) Tap-tap-tap-tap._ He repeated the sequence once as he spoke. "How're you going to get them down, Kid-san?"  
  
 _And did you understand? C'mon, dammit._ He clicked over to channel 314, listened for a second, and then clicked back to the regular Squad channel.  
  
Nakamori, still growly but less so, had yet to answer Kid's implicit statement; Kid spoke again, filling the radio silence. "Well, Conan-kun, I'll help them down all on my own, but that'll be a lot harder if they are trying to catch me while I help them. Nakamori-san, might you be able to do something about that?"  
  
The Inspector was silent for a moment. "My men's safety is paramount," he said at last; there was no defeat in his voice, though-- merely a shifting of priorities. The fire and explosions had become the enemy, danger and death had become the threat and not the escape of a wanted criminal. He was not, as had been mentioned before, a stupid man, and now he took a deep breath. "What do you need?"  
  
 _Tap-tap-tap. (pause.) Tap. (pause.) Tap-tap-tap-tap._ Conan bit his lip, flicking back to the private channel once again, where he hesitated, hoping.  
  
"All I'll need is your promise that your men won't try to unmask me, and a steady anchor on the dock to the north of the building, capable of holding, ah le le le, about a thousand kilos of tension? Just to be on the safe side." His cocky smile was audible.  
  
On Conan's radio alone, a crackle preceded Kid yet again, this time speaking sotto voce to an audience that was decidedly not seven years old.  
  
"You might want to make your codes more clear, Tantei- _san,_ for a bit there I was trying to make sense out of what _'sth'_ might mean."  
  
"Pot? Kettle? Black?" muttered Conan, shoulders slumping. "If I'd meant to use Morse Code I would've done an SOS first. So-- what's the situation?" In the background Agasa had clicked on one of his own devices; the detective caught the last of Nakamori's voice as he announced through his teeth that No-one Was To Unmask The Kid, That Was An Order Goddammit, and his assurance that a firetruck would be parked on the dock as requested.  
  
"Under control," Kid laughed, his voice echoing as he lowered himself head-first down a vertical shaft of ductwork. The cavity was narrow, no more than two feet wide on each side; his shoulders slid smoothly down the shaft, lightly pressed to the metal on both sides. Single fibers of his cape snagged on the rivetwork, causing little hesitations and tugs to his clothing as he went. A small flashlight held in one hand both provided light and served as a belay, allowing him to smoothly kill his momentum as he reached the bottom of the shaft. Toes resting against the metal to keep himself from swaying on his tether, Kid shifted his flashlight and grip on the rope, picked up his dropped screwdriver, and began to unfasten the grate below his head while he continued the conversation with his most diminutive detective rival.  
  
"To be somewhat less coy, Tantei-san, I'm making my way over to the men now. Several rooms bubbled together in a trapped-air situation, as best as I can tell. Probably not able to move much away from the window that they knocked out for breathing's sake, though the draft is also probably drawing the fire under the doors they've surely closed on it. The structural integrity of the section I've just left is disintigrating, as well, and there's no guarantee that any of our dedicated Task Force members are anywhere near as svelte as I am; so retreat through the ductwork will be impossible." Kid paused for a dramatic sigh, then punched the center of the grate beneath him sharply with the butt of his flashlight. Knocked loose, it shot to the floor of the room below him in a shower of sparks and dust; behind his handkerchief mask, Kid smiled happily as the ringing impact sent feedback over the radio line and was answered with a series of confused shouts from below.  
  
"I'm afraid I'm about to plummet to my doom, Tantei-san. Be good to my wife for me."  
  
Seven-year-olds, at least ones with Conan's altered physiology, can actually sweat the equivalent of bullets when the right moment presents itself. This was one of them. "WHAT?" Static buzzed over the radio, interspersed with heavy clattering and what sounded like distant voices. "Don't be an asshole," he snapped, fighting down acid worry in the pit of his stomach. "Are you trying to tell me that after avoiding police, helicopters and Nakamori all this time you can't manage to escape from one little--" The line fuzzed, broke, jitted back into clarity. "Kid!"  
  
Agasa tapped his shoulder, brow furrowed with worry; Conan keyed the mike and left it open as he spoke. "They've got the firetruck in place," the scientist said. "The ladder's extended in case he needs a higher brace than the truck itself can provide. Will that work?"  
  
"Thank you, that will be fine," Kid answered cheerily. The final 'e' was obscured by a sudden flurry of static, as insidiously loud as spiderweb is clingy. "I may not be able to continue chatting with you fine gentlemen," Kid continued, this time on the standard Task Force frequency, piped out of Agasa's radio as Conan's shifted to quiet open air; "Thank you for your company this evening!"  
  
And the line - both lines - went silent.  
  
*  
  
Conan-- Shinichi, whoever-- didn't remember vaulting to the top of the squadcar; he didn't recall Agasa passing over the binoculars or the sound of Nakamori's wordless, frustrated groan. Heavy black smoke suddenly gusted white in steam as, somewhere, the convention center's sprinkler-system pumped water onto fire; that was good, it was still working. Maybe it'd give the trapped men and their rescuer a slight edge.  
  
No-one ever got hurt at a Kaitou Kid heist. _Ever._  
  
From his viewpoint, the rooftop was almost totally obscured by the steam; there was nothing he could do but wait.  
  
*  
  
Inside the building, Kid tucked his radio back into his jacket and wiped sweat off his brow, carefully replacing his top hat firmly on his head. A deep breath didn't do much to steady his nerves, but it did at least steady his body. He hung, completely motionless, in the cramped ductwork shaft for a long moment, breathing smoothly and calmly. With his chin tucked to his chest, the confused officers in the ballroom below couldn't see anything through the opened grate except the top of Kid's hat, and he was more than content to leave it that way. His monocle was still tucked into his breast pocket, but without shadows to play off of it and around it, it was nothing more than a glass lens, no protection at all. He was more safe with his handkerchief mask, which snugly obscured everything from his cheekbones down to his collar. It displayed the shape of his face rather more clearly than he'd like, but he couldn't take the chance that it would fall loose, either because of the debris in the air or for the protection of his identity. Snug was better than nothing at all, and very soon he'd be moving too much and too quickly to worry about the mask.   
  
Kid took another breath, slowing his racing heart. This was about to get very scary, at least for himself. For the officers below him - who had begun yelling up at him, asking what was wrong - it was probably already scary. The thought was little comfort.  
  
 _Think about how you'll tell Kudo about this next time you see him online,_ Kaito murmured gently to Kid. Had they had two separate bodies, Kaito would have comforted Kid with a hand on his shoulder, or perhaps a jaunty adjustment of his top hat's brim. As it was, alone in the ductwork, Kid relaxed somewhat, smiling to himself.  
  
 _Showtime,_ Kaito laughed, crowing the word for both their benefits within Kid's head. Kid's small smile cracked open into the manic grin he was best known for, straining the cloth across his mouth, and he let go of his cable with both hands.  
  
*  
  
The ballroom's ceiling was only about fifteen feet up. Nevertheless, by the time he'd dropped half that height, shooting out of the ductwork like a grey phantom, an explosion of dust and soot ballooning around him, Kid had tucked in his legs and arms and completed a full somersault. Ten feet off the ground, the grey ball of thief suddenly stretched out his legs and arms, cape flying loose behind him, and one foot from the ground, he seemed to slow and almost hover, so that when he did touch down, it was on the tips of his toes, lightly as a party balloon coming to rest. His knees absorbed the slight impact as he hit the ground, and a little puff of grey dust came up from his cuffs. He was quite the sight - all in grey, save for the purple handkerchief across his face, the soot-stained bright red tie beneath that, and his cape - the inside of which had, somehow, made it through the tunnel-like ductwork completely unmarked. It hung around him, billowing out from his body as though infused with helium. Perhaps the heat of the air or fumes in the room made it lift? Kid's eyes - blue-purple, indigo really, and sparklingly bright as gems - shone out of his sooty face, fierce with excitement, and even through the double-layered handkerchief mask, his huge toothy grin was clearly evident.  
  
The officers backed away from him, first one step and then another, their hopes of rescue beginning to twitter and flit about like uncertain hens. Was Kid really going to help them? He looked almost like - well, some kind of dirty angel, almost. One or two glanced behind them: the two full walls of plate glass windows, one to Kid's right (their left) and one directly across the room from their five-man cluster, were coated with bay spume and soot on the outside, slick gas and fume residue on the inside. Searchlights and floodlights from police boats, bobbing in the bay as close as was safe to the building, reflected against all that dirt and grime, illuminating the windows like glowing flatscreens rather than transparent objects. The bay was uneasy, waters choppy, and the boats' floodlights bobbed with the water's motion. Slices of movement, a black patch of water here and there, could still be seen through the shifting glare, but for most purposes, the windows were inscrutable.   
  
At about that point, a creak from the ballroom's double-wide doorway, ten feet directly behind Kid, gave a split second's warning before both flimsy doors blew inward in an explosion of heat, flame, and smoke. Kid was perfectly framed before the blast, backlit in a way that no special effects team could hope to replicate, and his cape whipped forward around him, shielding his body as he instinctively crouched, ducking his face to protect it from the superheated air rushing in the door. The officers hit the floor, covering faces, ears, and necks as best as they could. A wrenching shriek, followed by a finite, crystalline snap, sounded from the far side of the room.  
  
Still pressed to the floor, Kid chuckled wryly. "That's done a good bit of my work for me. Delightful. Gentlemen, if you would, please, let's head over to that far corner?" Kid lifted his head and one arm, pointing to the corner of the room where the two plate glass windows met. A huge crack, which drank in the light from the fire and floodlights like it was electrified, ran diagonally across the end wall's window; the side window showed only slight damage around its frame at the corner.  
  
As one, the Task Force officers began to crawl toward the indicated corner. Kid kept pace with them, despite his sore muscles and aching lungs. The air in the ballroom, even as high as its ceilings were, was now so saturated with things that just _shouldn't_ enter human lungs that breathing was painful. Kid had no doubt that the Task Force members were suffering too...though, come to think of it, they hadn't been crawling through ductwork laced with soot, dirt, and who knows what else. _Well, you didn't really have a choice,_ Kaito opined optimistically.  
  
"Not now, please," Kid muttered.  
  
When they reached the glass-walled corner, Kid scampered to inspect the crack in the glass. Satisfied with what he found, he backed off and pointed at the two burlier officers in the group. "Please smash that window, sirs. I think the tables will be helpful."  
  
"There's nothin' but water out there, Kid," one of them protested. "The boats can't get close enough t'reach us."  
  
Kid's inscrutable smile did nothing but become more firm. "Please smash that window regardless. We really don't have a lot of time."  
  
"You're the boss, Boss," one of them said, rising to his feet and grasping one edge of a large round dinner table. Another laughed, slightly hysterical.   
  
"I can't believe you just called the Kid our Boss!" Grinning amiably, that one - the thinnest, of medium height - stood to help the other two officers.  
  
While they worked, Kid rustled through his clothing and pulled out a small circular glass cutter. He quickly employed it at a height just above shoulder level, slicing an opening into the side window wall right at the corner, directly next to the narrow steel corner brace that connected the two glass walls at a right angle. Once he'd punched out the circle of glass, putting some shoulder into it, Kid dropped to the ground again, ducking under the majority of the smog, and addressed the fourth officer.  
  
"Please shatter the remainder of the glass between the edges of my little hole and the steel brace." He handed over his steel-clad flashlight with a nod. As the officer rose to his task, the other three officers finally broke through their window. The resulting shatter was so loud that even Kid wasn't able to overcome his instinct to flinch away from its source. Tiny shards of rounded "shattersafe" glass scattered everywhere, peppering the officers' and Kid's clothing and hair. As the table they'd used as a battering ram splashed into the bay, the officers and Kid breathed deeply and hungrily of the air that was now open to them - salty, sour, and laden with smoke - but despite all these things, still so much clearer than the gaseous smog they'd been trapped in up to that point.  
  
As hungry for fresh oxygen as the five men, the fire at the door roared brighter and stronger, quickly reaching the ceiling and making the aluminum grates set into the wall for ventilation shriek as they expanded from the heat and scraped against their sockets.  
  
"Gentlemen! We have approximately one minute, perhaps thirty seconds." With that rather distressing statement, Kid stepped to the gaping hole in the glass wall. He passed a light, but tightly-wound steel cable through the cut hole in the side glass wall, around the steel corner support, and then back on itself; a climbing-gauge cairbeaner attached to the end clicked over the wire itself, forming a self-tightening noose firmly affixed to the corner support of the building.  
  
With a handful of silk scarves in his gloved right hand, Kid unflinchingly grasped that same support and leaned his weight out the window and around the support. With his right foot braced on the floor inside the ballroom, his left hanging out above the bay, and his right providing the pivot point by which he could rotate out to this angle, Kid aimed his card gun with his left hand at the fire truck parked on the edge of the bay. Sighting along its top cross, Kid seemed the perfect poised image of focus, despite his grey and black stained clothing, the shards of glass glittering in his wild hair and the brim of his hat, the purple handkerchief across his mouth stained black where the perspiration and steam of his breath had glued soot to the fabric, and the thick rivulets of blood streaming down the windowframe from where his hand clutched the metal edge, still set with sharp jutting points of window glass.  
  
"Please inform Nakamori-san that his team is to secure this projectile at all costs," Kid instructed his Task Force members, projecting his voice to be heard over the roar of fire, bay, siren, and boats, yet somehow still sounding calm despite the situation. And then he shot.  
  
*  
  
It was a tiny thing that Conan saw, almost faint enough to be nothing more than lens-distortion artifact (the binoculars weren't exactly state-of-the-art)-- a flicker of light, like a single pixel on a computer screen. It trailed more light, just the faintest flash that vanished in the second that it was seen, heading towards the firetruck on the northern dock.  
  
They'd-- well. 'Appropriated' was a good word for what they'd done with the squadcar (and the detective tried not to think about Nakamori's reaction when he found out, but at least it'd been driven by the professor and not by one Edogawa Conan, seven years old and too short to work both pedals and wheel at the same time.) And now he was back on the roof, only a few feet from where the projectile smacked into the firetruck's door.  
  
It was a playing-card: the Eight Of Clubs, thicker than usual and trailing a thin, taut line behind it. The card quivered where it had stuck two centimeters deep into the metal, and its tether hummed a shrill, tense note, a harp-string played upon by smoke-filled air.  
  
Nakamori had beaten them there; after staring at the card, he cautiously picked it out of the metal and allowed the line to drop slack. One of his men ran up, gasping a little in the heavy air. "SIR! Sir, we just heard from--"  
  
"--Kawahara, I know." Distracted, the Inspector held up his radio, never taking his eyes off the card in his hands. "I heard." He handed it over to the suited-up fireman beside him, reluctance in every movement. "Secure this, will you? Tight as you can, fairly high." The officer squinted along the line at the distant flames, redder than before and accompanied by renewed clouds of blackness; and Conan followed his gaze with the binoculars.  
  
 _Holy shit. There he is._  
  
*  
  
The interior of Kid's cape, still mostly white, flashed in and out of sight as it flapped in the wind; now folded and dark, now open and white; now twisted and grey. White - black - white - grey - black - grey - white - black - red. Then it disappeared back into the building.  
  
*  
  
Kid climbed back into the ballroom briskly, ignoring the pain in his left thigh; walking without favoring the leg, he trotted behind the officers and herded them toward the gaping window. "Come on now, let's go!"  
  
"Go _where?_ " asked the shortest one.  
  
"Out the window, of course! You're going to get your first lesson in Phantom Thieving tonight, and that lesson is, don't rely on the ground to get you places! There's plenty of other things to hold you. Now, Nakamori-san should have that line secured, so please pull out your gun, your nightstick, anything hard and large enough to grab with two hands, and let's go! Remember to push off of the window!"  
  
To their credit, they didn't resist a _lot._ But there was fire at their backs, smoke on their tongues, and the encouragement of a very earnest pair of glittering indigo eyes to spur them on. One by one, they edged their way out onto the zipline, suspending themselves by whatever items they could manage. One of the men had neither nightstick nor gun, so Kid handed him his flashlight and shoved him on his way. The four of them proceeded forward - at a slow pace, as the angle of the zipline wasn't enough to overcome their vertical weight and friction, and necessitated that the officers swing themselves forward, like a playground's sliding-monkeybars contraption, to gain forward motion.   
  
The angle that they had to start out at - reaching around the entirety of the window's corner frame to reach the wire, then pushing off of the side window panel, which was nearly parallel to the zipline for the first ten feet and, for that distance, hampered their movement extremely - was anything but ideal, but because of the way that the windows had cracked, there was no other choice. Had Kid taken the time to break the preferable side window, they would all still be standing in the heat and smog right this second, as the ceiling finally succumbed to the fire's appetite and collapsed downward in whole, revealing the metal struts and ductwork laced with orange tongues of hungry flame that ate up the insulation, curled the wires, and melted the lighting fixtures. The decorative ceiling panels, charred and disintegrating, blanketed the ballroom's fine wooden dancing floor and carpeted table areas with ash and live embers, and the sick choking fumes of burning varnish and lacquer bloomed up within the room like hazardous flowers.  
  
In the midst of this deteriorating scene, Kid shielded his eyes and face against the waves of heat in the air and waited for the last of the officers to reach shore. One fell off the wire near the edge of the bay, his strength exhausted; another two made it all the way to the shore. The fourth, having difficulty due to his heavy weight which increased the friction on the zipline tenfold and made sliding momentum nearly impossible, still labored to pass the midpoint of the line.   
  
Too close to the water's surface to risk launching his glider out the window, Kid stood at the window, waiting for the last officer to finish his crossing and be rescued. With his card gun attached to the zipline, Kid couldn't lift himself to the rooftop in order to take advantage of the huge thermals rising off the doomed convention center extension. He had a set of glass suctions in his kit, but there was little to no chance that they'd be able to adhere to glass so thoroughly filthy as was the remaining ballroom's window. And everything else of his kit had been used up in getting to this room, and in rescuing the officers. Even his flashlight, with which he could have signaled for a helicopter ladder, had been sacrificed to get the fourth officer onto the zipline.   
  
In his pocket, Kid's monocle lay hot and heavy against his chest, and his brow dripped with sweat, as the building fell to pieces around him. The ballroom was progressively collapsing, moving from the doorway toward the far wall where Kid stood waiting. He had no idea how much time was left before the ceiling above him - or the corner support anchoring the zipline - was going to go. And he couldn't really wait for the card gun to be cleared; however much time he had left, it was less than the time it would take for the officer to reach safety. If the zipline went now, Kid wasn't too worried about that last officer; he was more than half the distance to the shore, and the rescue boats could certainly throw him a line, if not directly reach him and tow him onboard.  
  
That just left Kid himself.  
  
 _Sorry, Kudo,_ Kid sighed to himself, as the ballroom ceiling gave a final shriek, shuddered, and collapsed, seemingly in slow motion, above his head. The flames came rushing down upon his head, pushing a whirling rush of superheated, ember-flecked air before them, as Kid popped open his glider and closed his eyes.  
  
*  
  
And _this_ was what Conan saw:  
  
 _A gout of flame like the roar of a dragon, hungry and red-toothed; claws spread wide and grasping around the edges of the building, and beyond it in the direction of the northwest portion of the bay... something white. So small at this distance, even with the binoculars; but it flew like an arrow, like a hawk bearing the breath of the dragon beneath its wings. And when at last it lost momentum, it was still moving fast enough that as it touched the water it_ _skipped_ _\--  
  
\--once--  
  
\--twice--  
  
\--three times--  
  
\--before striking with a flat, deafening splash for the fourth time against deep black water._  
  
Small sneakers thudded over the pavement, sliding to a stop at the water's edge even as Nakamori's larger footfalls halted behind him. "Where is he? Where is h-- _**there**_ _."_ The Inspector snatched Conan's binoculars out of his hands; the boy didn't even bother to complain, just craned his neck.   
  
He could just see something white-- "The glider's floating," Conan heard himself murmur. "We need a cruiser." Or a fishing-boat, or a goddam row-boat, anything at all. That hadn't been an easy landing.  
  
It hadn't been a landing at all, not really; it had been a crash.  
  
Two minutes later a police harbor cruiser was against the shore, lights flashing; Nakamori snapped out orders to his men (Conan caught _ambulance_ and _picked men_ and _no goddamn Press or I'll_ before the Inspector turned abruptly around, one foot over the railings and one still on the shore...  
  
"You!" he barked, pointing a finger.  
  
...to stare at Conan. "Erk?" replied the young detective; behind him, Agasa froze.  
  
The Inspector waved at the craft. "In. Now. Both of you."  
  
 _Uhh... what?_  
  
There was no time. They were bumping across multiple wakes and on their way to the distant scrap of white before Agasa had the presence of mind to ask. "Err, Nakamori-keibu? Not that we aren't... that is, not that this isn't..." He gave up. "WHY did you want us along? We're hardly here in any official capacity."  
  
"That's why," growled the man, not looking away from their target; they were nearly there. He glanced for a bare second over one shoulder, and his eyes were tired and bleak. "You heard me earlier; I said that the safety of my men was the most important thing here, and that bastard got 'em safe home." He shrugged. "You're both along as insurance. If things go wrong, I want witnesses."  
  
Agasa blinked. "Ahh," he said, blanching slightly. "You want... a civilian presence?"  
  
 _No, the son of a bitch wants an_ _ **excuse**_ _. If Kid's healthy enough to escape on his own, then Nakamori can always blame it on 'civilian presence', error due to having to keep us safe or some other stupid reason._ For a moment, Conan's vision was washed with a red that didn't owe itself to fire or exhaustion. But--  
  
 _Then again, he'd get away, wouldn't he? And I know and Nakamori knows that for once, this time, he deserves it._  
  
The engines cut out as the officer steering their craft dropped them to a low idle; a few meters beyond, something vaguely white was draped half across a tangle of debris. There was, just barely audible, a groan; Nakamori set his jaw, already reaching for a long hooked gaff.  
  
*  
  
There wasn't enough light to really make out more than the obvious injuries, but (and Conan fought back something that could and would become hysteria if he let it) you didn't need a lot of light to see bloodstains on white, did you? The Inspector and the professor were being careful, but they had to be causing their charge a great deal of pain. _Left thigh, lacerations; right arm and palm, bruises and lacerations; face and throat--_  
  
"We need to remove this," muttered Nakamori; the fabric covering the thief's face and throat was burned, especially in the lower folds; it had saved him from far worse injuries, but the skin beneath was undoubtedly scorched. The Inspector reached up-- paused--  
  
\--and turned away to eye Conan, like an echo of what he'd done so recently on the shore. "You do it." There was a strange note in his voice; something very like regret. "Here." He held out the surgical scissors he'd been using. "Cut as little as you can. And don't talk to me while you're at it, will you?"  
  
Conan swallowed once, and then crawled up into the narrow space beside Professor Agasa.  
  
The burns on the face were minor to moderate, probably produced by the superheated air rather than fire itself; carefully Conan clipped away bits of cloth, using a dampened piece of gauze from the boat's first-aid kit to free the fabric from the fragile skin. As he did so, two eyes _(two, not one and a monocle, two!)_ opened blearily and focused on his. A hand came up; Agasa caught it before it could fasten on Conan's wrist. "Keep still," said the detective quietly. "We're doing what we can." He swallowed hard once again, glanced over his shoulder, and added very quietly: "No handcuffs yet."  
  
Kid regarded him steadily past the pain; comprehension and panic flickered for a moment before his eyes hazed over once more, closing. The boy glanced at Agasa, who laid the thief's hand carefully back down; and the two set back to work.  
  
* * * * *  
  



	4. "Bed, absence, bicycle"

**_Chapter Four:  "bed, absence, bicycle"_** _ **  
  
**_Kid woke in a hospital bed. He could tell what it was even before his eyes were open; when he did get them open, with difficulty, the glare of white ceilings and white light and white _everything_ was strong enough that he squeezed them shut again. He instinctively reached to rub the grit from his eyelashes, but as soon as he crooked his index finger to do so, the pain made him flinch and relax every muscle again, holding his whole body perfectly still until he could figure out what hurt, and why.  
  
And more importantly, until he knew exactly how much trouble he was in.  
  
"No one knows who you are, John Doe." The voice was light, young, and directly to his left. Conan, probably sitting in a visitor's chair. Kid turned his face toward the sound of Conan's voice - then, slow thoughts belatedly catching up with his situation, turned his face away quickly. The fast motion yanked on his bandaged throat and he winced in pain.  
  
"Stay still. You have been asleep exactly eleven hours and twenty seven minutes, about half of the time that the hospital staff estimated you would need to regain consciousness. The only persons who know where you are, are Dr. Agasa and myself. Inspector Nakamori sent us to admit you to a hospital for your burns. Your throat will probably scar. Your face will probably not." Conan's voice was cool and detatched - mostly. Underneath the professionalism, a thread of unsteady tension, like a stretched and strummed rubber band, threatened to snap at every full stop.   
  
Perhaps because of this, Conan left little silence between his words, threading sentences together without leaving space for Kid to respond. That was just fine with Kid; he wanted as much information as possible, as quickly as possible. The odds that he had made it through this situation with any of himself intact - and he didn't mean his body or his skin - were vanishingly thin, but he couldn't help but cling to the hope that somehow, by some thread of chance, he might have gotten very, very lucky.  
  
"You are officially admitted here as John Doe. You are listed as a protected witness in last night's crisis, and are under a police order of confidentiality that forbids the hospital from releasing any information at all about you to anyone, and also forbids any staff from running identifying bloodwork, DNA sampling, or fingerprinting tests, unless Inspector Nakamori approves that release. Inspector Nakamori has instructed Dr. Agasa and myself to judge when, and what, information should be released, if at all."  
  
Conan's voice paused, hesitating, as though what more he had to say was hard for him to voice. When Kid attempted to speak, licking his lips and coughing to try to clear his throat, Conan coughed as well, then said without inflection:  
  
"Inspector Nakamori did not see your face."  
  
 _But I have._  
  
Kid could hear the implication in Conan's statement as clearly as if he'd spoken it himself. Conan - Shinichi - had seen the Kaitou Kid's face.  
  
And had met that face before. At the park, where Kid had thought he'd be perfectly safe to be perfectly himself, hiding behind his _lack_ of disguise.  
  
A soft curse made its way from between clenched teeth.  
  
"I feel similarly," Conan's voice answered again, but this time the inflection was transparent, not seeking to hide the true identity of its speaker. An offering, maybe? "I would give nearly anything not to have seen you." The breath of silence that followed this was complicated; and it was almost as an afterthought that the young detective added: "Of course, I suppose we're on more of an equal footing now; you've seen my real face too."  
  
There was a water-pitcher on the bedside table; small footsteps soundless on the floor, Conan slipped from his chair and carefully poured, inserting a straw and holding out the institutionally-plain plastic glass. "Can you drink this? You need to hydrate yourself as much as possible," he said in his light child's voice, just as if everything else that had been said had been normal, without consequence.  
  
 _You've been injured. You're in the hands of your enemies. I know who you are. You know who I am._ Just everyday conversation, nothing to worry about. And Conan's hand, holding the plastic glass, looked steady as a rock... if you discounted the faint, almost invisible tremor of the water contained within. Funny how the little things gave people away.  
  
A hand that shook more than the delicate meniscus of water lifted, fingertips touching the straw and helping to guide it to his mouth. Kid lifted his head off the pillow a small distance, neck straining to hold up the weight, throat working while he swallowed the cool water. Conan's hands, wrapped around the glass, were brushing against the heel of Kid's hand as he held the straw still; when he'd drunk enough, and sank back to the pillow, Kid didn't even seem to have noticed - or more importantly, cared - that their skin had touched.  
  
 _Slow movements. He's a wounded tiger, not a tame rabbit. Unless you want him bolting out the nearest window the first time your back's turned, you're going to have to give him reason to believe he's safe.  
  
IS he safe? Nakamori promised not to stop by. But--_  
  
All of this had passed through Conan's mind in the time it took for him to draw back, put the glass back down and refill it. "The officer who drove the boat has been sworn to secrecy as well," he said quietly. "Turns out his cousin's one of the men you rescued, so I don't think you have any problems there. So..." He hesitated, slipping back up onto the chair, hands gripping the wooden arms as he studied the silent thief. "I guess the question now is what to do with you. Or, more to the point... what do _you_ want done?"   
  
Kid frowned - subtly, because of the bandages holding the skin of his face mostly immobile.  
  
 _I want my monocle.  
  
I want to undo this.  
  
I want a computer screen between us.  
  
I want shadows.  
  
I want to stand up, to not be flat on my back and too weak to move.  
  
I want you to stop looking at me like that.  
  
I __need_ _to hide._  
  
Of all the conflicting urges flying through Kid, that last one - the need to hide, run away, and in doing so be _safe_ \- was overwhelming, a screeching klaxon growing in volume with every rational, calm, reasonable statement that Shinichi made. Fighting to keep the rising panic from his eyes ( _monocle,_ please, where is my monocle, _please!_ ), Kid carefully formed quiet words, relying more on Shinichi's lipreading skill than on pushing enough air to make clear syllables.  
  
"I want to go home."  
  
Conan merely nodded; he'd expected as much. There was a memory in the back of his mind, one that he usually didn't let out of its box: the first night after his change, when he'd huddled on his futon on Mouri Kogoro's floor and bitten his lip almost bloody, keeping silence while terror and loss beat wings inside his head until it was too much to bear. He'd never known if he'd just fallen asleep or blacked out in despair that night; what he remembered (when he allowed himself to, which wasn't often) was the way that fear could become a _pressure_ behind your eyes, a presence that pushed everything else out of the way and tried to claw itself free.  
  
"Is there someone I can contact?"  
  
(He remembered... waking up. Knowing that the world'd flipflopped and that he couldn't go back, couldn't undo what'd happened or wrap his former safety around himself like a blanket of _Kudo Shinichi_ -ness. And he remembered clinging to things like talismans: his housekeys, the clothes he'd been wearing (he hadn't even let them be washed; the green jacket still had bloodstains on them from his injured head), the plastic Tropical World rides-pass bracelet. Oh yeah; he remembered.)  
  
Kid froze. Contacting someone...would require giving their identifying information. It would lay them as bare as he himself was. It would rip open yet another seam of his carefully enclosed world; let light come pouring into the studio of his fleeting nighttime missions, searing the film both exposed and not, wrecking past memories and ruining the chance to make future ones. It would be like a flood through a printing press, washing away what it didn't rust.  
  
" _No,_ " he rasped. "I can walk. Let me sleep. Then I'll leave."  
  
The boy rolled his eyes. "Don't be an idiot," he said calmly. "I'm not asking you to break confidence with anybody; right now you're about as anonymous as you're going to get-- I just don't trust it to last forever." His gaze flickered across the figure on the bed before he turned it away, resting instead on a heavy-duty plastic garment bag in the closet, opaque and as anonymous as the room's occupant officially was. "Can you dial a cellphone?"  
  
If he could... if there was someone (and there had to be; not even the Kaitou Kid worked in a vacuum, did he?), then... "Here." The cellphone that Conan placed on the bedside table beside the glass was plain, the cheap kind you could purchase with preprogrammed minutes: anonymity again. "No trackers, no GPS, no tricks. Make the arrangements, tell me when you need my back turned." There was something in his pocket; Conan fingered it, thinking about talismans, and his already quiet voice dropped even lower.  
  
"I'm not going to pretend that this is anything like a normal situation; 'normal' has been suspended until further notice." He sighed, tugging off his glasses with his free hand and rubbing at his eyes, still not looking at the other person in the room. "Nakamori has been given-- 'discretion', I think was the term; so far as the rest of the authorities know, his men were saved by a good samaritan who prefers to remain unknown. Now, are you going to help yourself _stay_ that way, or do I need to begin playing guessing-games?"  
  
It wasn't a threat; Conan hadn't even tried to find anything out about the young man from the park. But he could have, and they both knew it. He drew out the small item from his pocket, unwrapped the layers of tissue from around it and-- carefully, slowly-- held it out. "One more thing. This fell out of your pocket in the boat."  
  
The speed at which Kid's hand snatched the monocle - cracked, but carefully cleaned, bright and smooth of ash and debris in the unforgiving light of the hospital room, green clover charm slightly singed but still dangling cheerily from its featherweight chain - was almost so fast as to render his hand unseeable. Pain lanced across his face, and he closed his eyes against it; the scorched flesh of the back of his hand was _not_ happy with him. But something in his heart could _BREATHE_ now.  
  
Even though he knew it would do no good - even though he knew it would be more a liability than an aid - he ached to clip it to the bridge of his nose, settling it into place where it _belonged._ Being without the monocle was like being without half of his own face. It _hurt,_ much as though the area exposed had been ripped free of his bones and left to scab over. Gruesome, distracting, heartwrenching pain. And with the little sliver of glass and ego in his palm, Kid just couldn't resist the need, the drive, to replace it. Instead he compromised, clutching the monocle in his fist and laying that hand, knuckles pressing his cheekbone and temple, over his right eye. The charm and its chain laid across his cheek, links catching on the bandages there.  
  
"Thank you." Kid formed the words silently, just mouthing them, and all it took was his single, uncovered eye to convey the happy, relieved, _watch-out-you-just-gave-me-a-weapon_ smirk that then suffused his face. He picked up the cell phone.  
  
Conan blinked; swallowed hard and recovered, though not without effort. "Uh. Fine. --Just please have the courtesy to not attempt climbing out the window," he added dryly, slipping out of his chair and moving towards the door. "You've been given the minimum dosage of painkillers for your injuries, but if you lose consciousness and land on your ass the nurses are going to want to bandage it for you." With that very ungradeschooler-like comment, he opened the door, and paused before going out.  
  
"...and you're welcome. Keio Gijuku Hospital, room 307. I'll knock first; five minutes."  
  
 _Click._  
  
*  
  
Outside, in the hallway of a very private wing in a very private hospital, a passing nurse raised both eyebrows as she walked past a door marked 'Quarantine - Do Not Enter'. There was a boy standing beside it, and as she went her way she wondered why he seemed to be quietly, methodically banging his head against the wall.  
  
*  
  
The car ride home was silent. Jii-chan -- Jintarou, really; "Jii-chan" was a relic from Kaito's childhood (or Kaitou's, if you wanted to look at it that way) that never really retired. Much like the man himself -- Jintarou drove the car silently, gently avoiding every possible obstacle that might jostle his passenger. Kid sat in the back seat, clutching the monocle to his face with a tightly-fisted hand. A handkerchief and bandages had been wrapped around his fist, monocle and all, to staunch the blood that flowed from the dozen splits that had ripped open, like the snapped skin of overripe tomatoes, across his knuckles and the back of his hand.  
  
Kid knew that Jintarou needed to be told what had happened. He was not only the Kaitou Kid's assistant, but his friend, guardian, and something of a parental figure to him; he had to be worried. Not twenty-four hours ago, Kaito had left his care perfectly intact. Now Kid returned, handed into Jintarou's care by _Edogawa Conan_.  
  
And yet he could not open his mouth. With his monocle in hand, he could summon enough strength to sit up and remain conscious, but barely. His body fought him for every minute, seeming to know what Conan - Shinichi - had told him upon his waking, that he had been expected to stay out for another eleven hours at least.  
  
 _Can't sleep, Nakamori'll get me,_ Kid thought morbidly. Throat dry, lips parched, eyes stinging, skin seared, ears ringing from the tension that clenched his teeth together until they squeaked, Kid sat shaking in the back seat of Jintarou's small, nondescript car, desperately thinking of nothing but the dark, black safety of Kaito's bedroom at home. When he reached it, when they got there, he could collapse. While he slept, Jintarou and his mother would poultice his burns with the same medicines and aids that had protected and healed his father, and then himself, in his work. They would bathe him, care for him, keep him safe.   
  
They would coaxe Kaito back from wherever he had fled, bring him back so that Kid could run from the daylight and the danger.  
  
He just had to make it home.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Kudo Shinichi was, most definitely, in need of some good advice and a dose of perspective. And so he'd found a nice, private place to have a consultation with the best authority on his current situation.  
  
The setting was okay: the fifth-floor observation deck of the Beika City Public Library, a bit of open rooftop with broad railings, comfortable benches and decorative plantings here and there. Usually kids weren't allowed up to the roof, but Conan had charmed the library staff into letting 'that bright little boy, you know, he works with the police!' go pretty much wherever he felt like. So a day after the disaster found him five stories up, ensconced in his favorite corner where he and his consultant could have a little privacy.  
  
It was just a pity that his consultant happened to be himself.  
  
 _I mean, who else am I going to talk to about this, anyway? Heiji? He'd go batshit. Professor Agasa? He twitches if I even_ _mention_ _the Kid at this point. Ai? Nooooot likely. My parents? Tousan'd want to interview him for the Night Baron books, and Kasan'd squeal like a fangirl. God. No, not them._ Chin on hand, Shinichi considered the depressing fact that he had just named off the entire list of people who still knew him by name, and yet he still had five fingers left to count on. If you didn't count the Kid, that is.  
  
 _Right. First question, Kudo. WHY did you let that nutjob go? No, never mind 'let', you damn well aided and abetted the escape of a known criminal, wounded or not. Why? If we went into legalities, you could say as seven-year-old Conan that since Nakamori'd not pressed charges or identified him, you were... no. Not even Mouri'd let that one fly. So no excuses. Why'd you do it?  
  
Because he didn't have to risk his life, his freedom or the success of whatever insane private mission he's on by helping those men, but he did. Because all he bargained for was no attempts at apprehension. Because if that's insanity, it's preferable to the kind of sanity that'd leave four new names on a police memorial wall.   
  
Because._  
  
Restlessly he kicked one foot out, propping his sneaker on a potted palm's container. Other than a couple of students in the opposite corner and one elderly gentleman with a newspaper, the rooftop was deserted this morning. Ran was downstairs digging up research material for a school project; he had plenty of time to think.  
  
Assuming he _could_ think. Current events pointed to 'no' in that regard.  
  
Savagely he kicked the palm's pot; the thud resounded across the rooftop, making the students' heads pop up like prairie-dogs' (the elderly gentleman remained hidden behind his newspaper; perhaps he was deaf.) Shinichi-- Conan-- hastily picked up one of the children's books he'd brought with him and flipped it open, pretending to read.  
  
 _So, next question. What, what, WHAT THE HELL are you going to do about knowing who he is? You_ _ **met**_ _him. You know his_ _ **name.**_ _If you had even half a brain you'd be spilling your guts to some uniform right goddamn now, but that's not going to happen, is it? Nakamori doesn't want to know, and you've got enough problems in that area as it is. Face it, nobody in their right mind would've invited a child into a police-boat like he did, Agasa or not. I don't think he's thought things out; he was working on gut-instinct, not actual fact or even conjecture. But he's_ _going_ _to think about it, and he's going to put two and two together and come up with Something's Wrong With Edogawa Conan. Might as well prepare yourself for that, Kudo; it was going to happen sooner or later, you just thought it'd be Takagi or Sato or maybe Megure-keibu._  
  
The book drooped in his hands, brightly-colored illustrations lying open and unseen as Shinichi stared past them and out across Beika's skyline. _"Kuroba Kaito, miss,"_ the young man in the park had said, handing Sonoko a carnation all the colors of the sun. He'd been, what? Ran's age or so and an obvious friend of Nakamori Aoko (a classmate? a childhood friend? maybe a relative? He'd looked peculiarly familiar, too.) So, 17 or close, skilled in prestidigitation and extremely light on his feet with acrobatic skills that had been, if Shinichi'd heard correctly, honed by frequent assault via mop.  
  
...maybe he'd gotten that last one wrong. Whatever.  
  
Shinichi sighed, massaging the place between his eyes where all the frustration seemed to gather. _Alright, Kudo. You know who he is; if you tried, you could almost certainly find out where he's gone, or at least possibilities in that area. Do you want to? You don't, or rather you don't want to_ _have_ _to. Putting aside the 'why' for the moment, just what IS your next move?_  
  
Try as he might, there wasn't an answer for that one.  
  
*  
  
It was [FILL IN X NUMBER OF DAYS HERE] until Kid saw Shinichi again. The part of him that would have made light of the situation - joking that he was acting like a wistful girlfriend or worse, a stalker - was still missing and silent. Kaito was either in trouble, or leaving Kid no excuse but to deal with his _own_ troubles. But Kid didn't feel a tug of crisis or need from Kaito's direction, so for all odds, he was probably just exercising some tough love toward his counterpart. And in a sad way, Kid could admit that Kaito was right - Kid was in a right complicated mess this time, like none he or his father had ever managed. Well. Except for getting killed.  
  
Kid shook that thought off briskly. The fact was, running away from this tangle - and from the decision of _what,_ exactly, he was going to do about Nakamori and Edogawa - would only prolong the inevitable, and might actually make things worse for him at the next heist. Because of _course_ there was going to be a "next heist." That was the one constant that even this dangerous convalescence couldn't change - the Kaitou Kid was anything but down for the count.  
  
Regardless, certain issues still needed to be addressed, and the safest way he could think of - applying "safest" as a _very_ relative term - was that which he'd been working on for the last [FILL IN X DAYS HERE]. And finally, it had paid off. Kid had too much faith in Shinichi's irrepressible curiosity to doubt that he would have, eventually, had success; but it was a fortunate thing that it had only taken [X] days for Shinichi to take one very straightforwardly obvious action.  
  
 _1nb!u says: konbanwa, ddctshn._  
  
*  
  
Conan... had had a bad day. Rain plus a forgotten umbrella had equalled sogginess for the first part of the equation; sogginess divided by sniping from three preadolescents (had he been such a know-it-all at that age? Never mind) had equalled overpowering irritability. And when you factored in general crankiness, worry and an abiding paranoia that Nakamori was going to show up, scoop him up, lock him in an interrogation room and wring him dry-- well. You got something that was the sum total of black depression with only a small remainder of sardonic humor to lighten it.  
  
Perhaps he needed to stop playing Sudoku so much. It was, he suspected, beginning to rot his brain.  
  
The chatwindow had been an impulse, brought on by at last giving into curiosity and, very tenatively, looking up a certain name. The response? That hadn't exactly been a surprise, but the rush of relief that'd accompanied seeing it had been.  
  
 _Konbanwa yourself. Up and around, I see,_ Dductshn typed, hunching a little over his laptop and edging his homework up just enough to block the screen.  
  
Kid shifted a little in his cocoon of blankets and pillows, carefully lifting a glassful of sweet juice from its bedside stand. The twisty straw that was threaded into its lid was tall enough that Kid didn't have to bend much at all, especially not his neck, to take a sip. Paramount were the priorities of keeping himself hydrated and making sure there were enough nutrients and electrolytes (and stuff; he'd zoned out through most of Jintarou's explanation) in his body to help him heal quickly. Meanwhile, the constant aches from his injuries kept him awake and focused, working his way through one problem at a time as he analyzed the tricky challenge of safely - and confidently - returning to work once he was well. A busy Kid was a happy Kid, or at least a content one, and so he didn't have to fake his sauciness as he answered Shinichi.  
  
 _ur either underestmting the # pillows on my bed, r overestmting how far i reached 2 grab my laptop._  
  
On the other side of the looking glass (so to speak), Shinichi snorted, though softly enough as not to attract either Mouri or Ran's attention. Little Conan had had 'the Talk' from Ran-neechan a day previously (no, not _that_ 'Talk'. He wasn't sure that he could survive hearing about the birds and the bees from Ran without having his head explode) regarding internet safety, stalkers and Being Careful Who You Talked To Because You Just Never Knew. He'd solemnly promised to call her if he ran across any problems with weird strangers accosting him in chatwindows; and then he'd very carefully reset the safety parameters back to unblocked.   
  
Staring at the screen, Shinichi felt his eyebrows rising. Oh well... _I take it you're healing well? Apparently the old adage of 'no rest for the wicked' doesn't hold true, hm?_   
  
Kid laughed, grinning at the messenger window overlaid across several tabbed displays of two or three internet browsers. Each was organized by theme, or relevance to each other; congruent tabs played off of each other, while tabs in separate windows of the same browser represented or informed about tangential thoughts and considerations related to the main tabs. Each individual browser contained the research for one 'project.' _funny! tryin a lil too hard thre, tho. & actually im -not- gettin @ much rest @ u think. workin frm home 2day ;)_  
  
 _ **Nnngh**_ _._ Shinichi's brain stuttered slightly as the tiny winking emotocon seemed to briefly develop a familiar, toothy grin. 'Working'. Well, it wasn't like he'd expected the thief to turn up his toes and accept an early retirement just because of a little brush with death. This was acceptable, this was predictable, this was-- going to be trouble. Surprise, surprise.  
  
 _Feeling a little sorry for your keepers here,_ he typed back as lightly as possible. _Must be like trying to take care of a flying squirrel who just did a barrel-roll through your campfire. Sounds like getting your tail scorched didn't set you back much, did it?_ ...Typing in _'Good'_ at the end of that sentence would probably be a bad idea, wouldn't it? It was a certain relief (God knew why) to see Kid like this, not a bandaged figure in a white hospital bed. It was also, Shinichi assured himself, the appropriate response that anyone would have towards an opponent who played on the same level as one's self-- a little like watching Heiji figure the ins and outs of a case while he worked it through as well, though with added larceny.  
  
Kid smirked, making a mental bookmark of his place ( _45 000 000 yen in average gain per transaction_ ) and then tabbing over to the chat window, typing his response before the gentle alert chime had finished sounding. _my 'keeprs' signed up 4 ths. thyre pros. also f i have a tail wht kind f tail is it? shironeko-chan?_ A quick image search produced a small .gif file that Kid promptly hotlinked into the conversation.   
  
[_[link]_](http://shop.aranziaronzo.com/product_images/image-s/05291_s.gif) _im more cheerful thn ths._  
  
  
The small cat-gif was just... no. Didn't work. On the other hand-- Calling up a certain link, Ddctshn typed: _More like this, actually: http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f175/Seigetsuya/kitsune.jpg And you know the tradition; kitsune always give themselves away. Their whiskers show up, or a paw or a tail, no matter how good their disguises are. Can't handle their alcohol, either._   
  
_smhow i doubt u could drink me undr the table, kitsune r no, chibitantei._ Kaito frowned at the screen, vaguely irritated. His good humor was too robust to let the irritation stick very strongly, but still, Shinichi's words rankled.  
  
"I do _not_ let my whiskers show," he pouted to his empty room.  
  
"Very good, sir," nodded Jintarou, traveling the hallway outside Kaito's bedroom door just in time to overhear the muttered comment. He continued past the doorway too quickly for Kid to be sure if he'd seen or imagined the smirk on his elderly assistant's face, but he frowned more deeply regardless, his tone petulant.  
  
" _Or_ my paws."  
  
Shinichi, on his end of things, was also slightly irritated; he dragged the cursor across the screen in curling loops and zigzags before bringing it back to the chatwindow and briefly considering adding a few emotocons of his own. It wasn't _his_ fault that he was more than a decade away from being legally able to drink, rather than less than half... Oh hell, whatever. _Moot point at best,_ he typed, feeling as if points were even so far. unless things change for me someday. If they ever do, you're on. Which had to be the craziest thing he'd ever considered doing, when you got right down to it; next he'd be challenging the damn thief to a karioke match, voice-changer versus voice-mimic.  
  
"Conan-kun? Who's that you're talking to?"  
  
 _AAGH._  
  
Ran had walked up; he'd vaguely registered her movements behind him, but she'd been seeing to her own homework and he'd let the familiarity of it become white noise, background to his own concerns. Now he quickly narrowed the chatwindow and typed in a fast sentence:  
  
 _My favorite's the Red-Headed League. Have you read all of Holmes' stories yet? I want to get better at English so I can read them that way, but we don't start studying that in school for a few years._ Hitting the enter key hurriedly, he turned to look at the young woman and frowned. "Ran-neechan, you're not supposed to read over people's shoulders. It's rude."  
  
 _Sorry, Ran. The last thing I need right now is to have to explain this, because I think... well, it'd be that head-explosion thing all over again. Only it might be yours that exploded, not just mine; you DID warn me against talking to strange people in chatrooms._  
  
However, she merely made a face. "You're right, it is rude. You're just so intent, that's all." Her eyes rested on the window (which showed the Welcome Holmes forum listing) and she smiled, the little amused quirk that he'd always secretly liked so much. "That Holmes club again? Well, have fun, and tell your friend hi for me, hm?"  
  
And he swallowed a sigh of both relief and guilt as she walked away, back to her own screen and keyboard. "...okay, Ran-neechan."  
  
On the other end of the connection, Kaito fiddled with a set of small juggling balls that Kid had set aside, frowning in confusion at Shinichi's nonsequitur.  
  
Kid blinked at him.  
  
Kaito blinked back.  
  
"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?"  
  
The room, lushly furnished, absorbed the sound of Kid's shout. The thief frowned, his laptop forgotten for a moment. "It's been two days! Your mother's worried!"  
  
Kaito snickered, scratching lightly at the peeling skin at their hairline, where the lightest of their burns were healing, as he rolled one of the juggling balls over the back of their other hand. "I wasn't the one in the hospital this time, you know."  
  
"You should have been there with me. Don't _do_ that again!" Kid squished the ball in his palm and crossed his arms, mindful of the still-tender backs of his hands.  
  
Kaito uncrossed them, laying palms flat on the bedspread to resist the urge to make fists that would strain his knuckles. "Do what? Leave?"  
  
"Yes!" Kid missed the ball, arms tired already, his grip too loose. Frustrated, he grabbed it up, then handed it off to Kaito for him to deal with. The magician got two balls into the air easily, watching them arc as he answered his counterpart testily.  
  
"No. I leave plenty of other times and you don't mind. I all but send you out the freaking door with a kiss and _"Honey, do well at work tonight!"_ right before every heist. Why's this one different?"  
  
Kid set aside the juggling balls and picked up a pair of 100-yen coins, immediately beginning to shuffle them across his knuckles. The process was slow and careful, hampered by the tenderness of his hands and the numb stiffness of both skin and joints. "...You should have been around this time."  
  
Kaito tsked (but allowed Kid to keep shuffling the coins) while dismissing and countering the thief's protest. "There wasn't a single moment that you needed me to cover for you. There wasn't any disguise involved this time! Even before everything went pear-shaped, you were in the _ductwork._ **I** do not go into ductwork on a regular basis. So it wouldn't have done a damn thing if it was me, not you, getting caught _in_ that ductwork. You didn't need my cover this time!"  
  
Kid humphed, answering in a delicately offended tone. "You're being ridiculous and I'm injured. Leave me alone."  
  
Kaito flicked their forehead. Kid swatted that hand away with their other one, and thanked the Lady that his mother or Jii-chan weren't watching through the open door. They would understand, of course, but they'd also still laugh.  
  
Distracted, Kid didn't think to block the second flick, either. Brow stinging, he glared into the empty center of the bedroom, brows pulled low over an expression that, while eloquent, was rather wasted on its audience.  
  
 _"You're ignoring your company,"_ Kaito murmured only for Kid's hearing, directing their attention to the chat window where Conan's last message had been followed by another one as well, sent in the delay while Kid and Kaito talked to themself.  
  
"Oh, _that_ phrase doesn't sound problematic," Kaito laughed, before retreating and leaving Kid to his more-or-less private conversation.  
  
  
 _Hello? Still there?_ Shinichi hit Enter again with a slightly aggravated sigh. _Ran says hi. Don't worry, she thought you were another Holmes fan._ God, WHY am I telling him 'don't worry'? he asked himself, or the ceiling, or Anyone who might be listening. This was getting too damn complicated; it was enough to make a detective long for a nice, safe, dead body or two to settle the nerves.  
  
 _sry,_ Kid typed quickly, _had a intrruption ovr here 2. i dealt w him._ Then he paused, rereading Shinichi's last message. After a moment of consideration, he added another line:  
  
 _dont think mouri-san wld appreciate me saying hi bck, so ill refrain._  
  
The reply was short and dry enough to carry through screen and distance: _Kind of you._  
  
Shinichi sat back, contemplating the thief's last comment with a scowl of concentration. 'He'? Likely one of Kid's so-called 'professional caretakers'. Just how many people were in on _his_ secret, anyway? General profiling of the Kid's M.O. suggested that he had at least one accomplice, more likely several, though it was considered a given that his heist plans, notes, et cetera sprang from a single demented and extremely wiley mind.  
  
 _So, working from home. Writing your memoirs? That'll be interesting reading,_ he typed out. What  did internationally-acclaimed criminals do on their days off, anyway?  
  
Kid's answer was prompt.  
  
 _memoirs happn when ur done w ur lifeswork.  
  
im nowhere near done._  
  
Was it Shinichi's imagination, or did that phrasing sound... sad?  
  
* * *  
  
The next few days chased the tail-end of Summer into Autumn, the season turning so rapidly that you'd expect to see skid-marks on the changing leaves. The weather took on that peculiar scent that comes with cool damp air when the things it flows around still expect to be hot and dry; and on an afternoon when you could actually taste the first breath of Fall when you drew in your own, Conan found himself quite a long ways from home, staring from a distance at a certain street-sign.  
  
He hadn't planned on being there, not at all. But... the Shonen Tantei were occupied with one thing or another for once, Ai was deeply involved in some new line of chemical pursuit, Ran and Sonoko were having a Girl's Night In at the latter's home (and hadn't _that_ been a narrow escape?) and there'd been this new bookstore he'd wanted to see, not all that long of a train-ride away and nothing Mouri'd care about what with the all-night majhong... The adults in Conan's admittedly narrow world hadn't put two and two together; he had, however, and now he had the rarest of things: an evening to himself.  
  
There were times that he sympathized _in extreme_ with the blond child in that American movie-- what was it called? 'Home Alone'?  
  
The new bookstore'd been decent, but not all that Conan'd hoped for; his train back didn't come for another hour or more. And-- when he'd looked up Nakamori's address, he'd noticed how close to the station it was. As was that of a certain neighbor of his, if you checked the right school records.   
  
But really... this hadn't been planned out. It had just happened: time and opportunity and a solar-powered skateboard, all of these leading to an impasse, one short block away from the address of--  
  
 _I could do this. I could go right up to the house, just like he came to Mouri's stairs. Hell, I could knock on the damned DOOR if I felt like it. 'Hello, can the Kaitou Kid come out and play Cops and Robbers?' I don't think so._ He couldn't quite see the house in question from where he sat; but if he got up from his bench and walked just a short ways down the street, just a few hundred feet... It was a little like being some sort of predatory creature: a shark, swimming in circles, closer and closer until-- until, until, until.  
  
 _No.  
  
Not happening. Not fair, not by the rules, not happening._  
  
Looking away, looking anywhere but down that particular street, Conan tucked his skateboard beneath his arm and stood. Maybe if he hurried he'd be able to switch out his ticket and catch an early train back.  
  
* * *  
  
A handful of days after speaking with Shinichi online, Kid had regained enough strength to walk around a little bit. Never satisfied except when he was pushing his personal limits to their breaking point, he escaped his mother's watch, ran a quick pass around Jintarou's blind spot, and was out the door with a bicycle and warm jacket before either of them could stop him. His health, not the weather, demanded the extra layers of warmth, but as he biked, a leisurely pace in a roundabout route that took him along only all the flattest streets, the cool breeze on his face still felt good. Tendrils of chill air snaked their way down into his turtleneck, brushing against his bandaged throat, and he frowned even though the sensation was a nice one. He still hadn't found a way to explain things to Aoko, and in all probability he wouldn't be able to throw together a convincing enough story before she had poked holes all the way through it anyway. He tapped the volume higher on his [music](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg_Rx6u3Hus) player, smoothing out the sounds of city traffic around him into one continuous buzz muffled by heavy bass and an artificially distorted voice.  
  
 _Saw you the other day  
Looking so undermined  
Acting like it wouldn't happen  
Making sense of anything that you could find_  
  
It couldn't have lasted forever, Kid told himself, biking through streets and past intersections he couldn't recognize, face uplifted to find his landmarks by the heights and shapes of the buildings that stood high above him. He wished for a different perspective; wished he were hanging from his glider, hundreds if not thousands of feet above the limits of fear that tethered most of the rest of the race to the ground.  
  
Sometimes, Kid didn't really feel like he was human, if being human meant fearing the sky.  
  
 _Because it's just about to happen  
And you'll be there  
You must have known the storm was coming  
When clouds appeared_  
  
Kid feared the ground. He had always feared the _exact_ situation that he now found himself in: grounded, pinions clipped. His body wouldn't be able to handle the strain of gliding yet, even if he had the strength to actually try it. The thinner air at altitude might be enough to disorient him, considering how easily he was able to wear himself out during this past week. And even if he kept his senses, he didn't yet trust his hands. Sure, he could steer a bike, but steering the glider - and doing his work while hanging in it - was entirely different. On top of all of that, there was now as much risk to Kaito the civilian as there was to Kid the criminal. Exposed as they both were, each endangered the other.  
  
So why - facing what just might be the end of the Kid, the end of his wings, and the prematurely forced end of his life's work - did he feel so calm?  
  
* * *  
  
The sky was downshifting from an orange-edged blue into grey twilight when the skateboard's power at last ran out; Conan'd been pushing it too hard, and he thought the power-cell might be loose in its casing. Letting the almost-silent growl of the motor die away, he scooped it up under one arm and trudged the rest of the way to the station on foot, thinking hard.  
  
Had he just screwed up royally, or just the opposite?  
  
 _In the big picture of things, Kid's a very minor menace. He doesn't kill or hurt or do anything other than theft and property damage, so long as you don't count Nakamori's blood pressure medication bills. I don't go after thieves as a rule; he's just... such a_ _challenge_ _, though. Addictive. As insane as he is, there's always a logic and a method behind everything, as opposed to your average or even intelligent murderer. Murderers just want to get away with their crimes, success over anything else._  
  
The unfamiliar station was crowded with people on their way home from work, school, shopping; Conan changed out his ticket with little trouble beyond the usual weird look _(What's a kid that young doing on his own?)_ and found a seat minutes later on the hoped-for early train. Barely aware of the other passengers, he continued his inner diatribe.  
  
 _So... I didn't follow this through. Why not? Same reason as I came up with at the library the other day; fine, I can deal with that. Shouldn't have come in the first place._ Restlessly he turned, propping his small form up and resting his crossed arms on the windowledge behind him. _He knows who_ _ **I**_ _am too, after all; he could betray me in a heartbeat, one little email to the right people and-- So. Guess I did the right thing, or at least something I can live with.  
  
Funny, you'd expect the bad guys to feel the guilt, not the good guys. We're supposed to have the strength of ten because our hearts are pure and all that crap. So much for fantasy._  
  
The rest of the ride back was quiet; and if Conan still regretted the impulse that had sent him out in the first place, for some reason it didn't sting as much as it might have before.  
  
* * * * *


	5. "Guun-Guun, doves, coffee"

_**Chapter Five**_ _ **: "Guun-guun, doves, coffee"  
**_  
  
Another week passed. Kid spent most of the time that was his at home, practicing sleight of hand while doing online research, but most of the week's total time was spent by Kaito. For one night, he curled up with his mother on the couch to watch a movie marathon. They both had to be careful because of his healing burns, and he kept his fingers moving slowly the entire evening, flicking coins back and forth, laboriously shuffling cards, while the movies lulled them both.   
  
Recovery time for second degree burns, the experts told him, was about three weeks, mostly of rest and a high calorie diet to facilitate healing. For burns on the hands, that time was increased, and added the necessity of physical therapy in order to maintain mobility and dexterity. With the latter half of those instructions, at least, Kaito and Kid had had no problem whatsoever - _nothing_ would deter them from healing their hands in the most thorough way possible, even though the burns they'd suffered there were a degree less severe than those on their throat. Nor did they quibble the calorie count - the household had run through about three gallons of ice cream in the two weeks since Kid had come home, and the grocery list already had a new flavor requested in thin black ink, with a bandaged Kid doodle next to it.  
  
But rest? Rest was proving difficult to accomplish. Neither of the two was the retiring type, but they couldn't argue that the bicycle trick had been poorly advised. It had laid them out for the next full day, and also resulted in locks - with cute drawings of a small, frustrated Kid - being installed on every doorway as a reminder. The windows were left unlatched, free for Kid to open and lean out of - but no further.  
  
Restlessly, Kid turned back to his task at hand - a paper letter, written in an unsteady hand on cute stationery featuring pictures of meatbuns with rabbit ears and small talking animals. In bright pastels, the stationery happily announced, " _Now is guun-guun time! Make happy and be peaceful with nature._ "  
  
With a dissatisfied sigh, Kid folded the letter closed and sealed it with a matching sticker. He really hadn't had any good idea what to say, but the act of writing the letter had been therapeutic - even if his handwriting was driving him up the wall. He hadn't even TRIED to render the Kid doodle.  
  
Slowly, Kid made his way out of his bedroom, pausing to slip on house scuffs and a thick robe over his scoop-neck sweater and thick pyjama pants. Scratching his hair out of his eyes, he padded carefully down the hallway, to the main staircase. Going down one level, across a long interior balcony extension, then up two more levels, brought him out of an angled rooftop doorway into a small conservatory and birdhouse. Within the glass walls of a typical greenhouse, plants and doves co-mingled with the occasional city pigeon smart enough to figure out that the Kuroba grounds provided a much more lush environment than did the Beika city streets.  
  
Kid greeted them all, gently petting wings and napes of most, scritching under the feathers into the itchy down layer for those of the birds who preferred that touch. All around him, they cooed warmly, a tiny army of featherlight companions with tiny rumbling hearts and endless possibilities open to them. "Keeta? Keeta, c'mere, girl," he murmured. A rosy bird with barring on her wings fluttered over to him, and he fixed the letter, a bulky thing, to her ankle. It dangled by a string beneath her perch as she sat on a rail in front of him, patiently holding out her leg for him to secure the knots to her messenger bracelet.  
  
"This one's big, Keeta. Think you can do it?" She cooed at him, cocking her head to the side. Kid smiled, stroking her forehead with one light fingertip. "Okay, but I'm going to send Moona with you too, okay?" Keeta made a lower sound, _prrrrt,_ displeased, and Kid and Kaito chuckled together.  
  
Kaito ruffled Keeta's tailfeathers gently, then lovingly smoothed them all back into place. "You can con the old ladies in the park with Moona along with you, you know. The old one-two act doesn't work without the two."  
  
Keeta considered this, then with a trill took off for the open panel in the structure's ceiling. With a startled flutter, a plump white dove sitting nearby took off, wings beating quickly to catch up with her partner.  
  
"Fly safe," Kid murmured, turning to sit down on a bench near the entrance to the greenhouse. He laid down on it, stretching out lengthwise. His short height was easily fitted to the length of the bench, even more so when he curled up a little, favoring his left hip as he arranged himself carefully, only the lightest of pressures allowed to rest on his throat bandages. Within a few moments, Kid had a bevy of lightweight companions blanketing him. Some of them, the older ones, mantled their wings to warm him the most. The rest curled up next to each other, taking and giving heat in turn, and the whole gathering, thief and birds alike, drifted off to sleep in a matter of moments.  
  
* * *  
  
The kanji test had been, to put it mildly, less than challenging; and while his classmates still labored over their own papers, Conan sat trapped in his seat and wished for something, _anything_ to get him out of there.  
  
 _Maybe there's a corpse hidden in the air-ducts? No, Mitsuhiko checked that a few months ago when we had that smell, the one that turned out to be somebody's forgotten tunafish onigiri. So-- fire-drill? Did that two weeks ago. REAL fire? Don't be an ass, Kudo._ He considered his watch. _I could shoot myself and pass out; that'd earn me a trip to the nurse's office at best, an ambulance ride at worst, so-- no. Ran'd be upset, and I'd just get to spend a day or two home with Mouri; not worth it._  
  
He snuck a sideways glance to his right. Ai was finished as well, of course, and seemed to be working something out in her head; Conan wondered if she realized that, when she was really concentrating, her lips moved. It was a humanizing habit, sort of endearing in a faintly horrifying way (there were few endearing traits about Ai, after all) and so far neither he nor the Professor had mentioned it except to each other.  
  
The classroom was nearly silent save for the scratch of pencils on paper; outside the closed windows a faint cooing from the everpresent pigeons that inhabited the building's ledges filtered through, along with a tiny persistent tapping. The latter made the boy flick his glance sideways-- and then stare...  
  
...at the two doves who were perched like spectators on the sill, both pecking away for all they were worth. Even from where he sat he could see the scrap of paper fluttering from one pink ankle.  
  
 _He_ _wouldn't_ _. He-- oh, what the hell. Of COURSE he would. He's probably bored out of his mind too._  
  
With an inner sigh (half of relief, half of exasperation), Conan raised his hand. "Sensei? I'm done. Can I be excused, please? I need to go to the bathroom."  
  
The sensei, who had always thought fondly of Conan - _that bright Edogawa child is always so easy to keep in line_ \- smiled indulgently and waved Conan along. "Go ahead."  
  
*  
  
The hard part wasn't getting outside; the hard part was luring the doves over to him while staying out of view from not just his own but _all_ of the classes so easily visible through the school's windows. Eventually, though, two doves perched on the branch of a bush; that selfsame bush concealed (or so he hoped) one Edogawa Conan, hidden in the flowerbed outside the administrative offices.  
  
"C'mon, bird," he whispered, just barely above a breath; the rose-colored dove made a soft, muttering noise while its white companion preened beside it. At last, though, the bird edged towards Conan's careful fingers and allowed him to tug the folded paper free.  
  
 _WHAT_ _in the--_ In befuddlement and dismay he stared at the bright, cheerful sticker; tugging it free, he flicked the letter open and winced at the capering woodland creatures that decorated the obnoxious thing. _Good God. Even Ayumi'd say these were over the top._ It took some suppression of his gag reflex to get past 'Guun-guun' and its friends, but focusing on the words he read:

 _Hope this finds you well. I am recovering, if maddeningly slowly. There is scant entertainment to be had when so strictly restricted as I have become. Part of this is my own doing - my keepers, dedicated souls they are, endeavor to prevent another moonlighting (no pun intended) session as I made roughly a week ago. My bicycle, among other things, has been confiscated.  
  
I am reduced to napping, spoiling the birds rotten, and sleight of hand. I've been working on a new French drop variation, though it might not actually be new; I could dedicate more time to my study of magic and the magic community if I dedicated less time to being the figurehead _of _that community. Irony, I suppose. But now you know my secret! Shhhh.  
  
The lovely ladies who have delivered my missive to you are Keeta and Moona. Your guess who's who. If you use their names, they will return your response, should you have one, with the utmost of promptness; they get extra treats for an adorable landing, so be sure to give the girls a ribbon for their necks or somesuch. (Actually, do not, it might end up strangling them.) Moona's a bit chubby, but it just means there's more of her to love. She tends to have an itchy neck frequently; help her out, would you?  
  
That's all from me for now. This time next week I'll have a long lustrous braid for you to clamber up. Reach my tower, apprehend the fugitive, and carry me away in shackles! ...Because at least then I'll be able to see something other than this blasted house.  
  
_ _♥_ _,  
k.k._

  
  
Weirdly enough, it was the mental image of the Kid on a bicycle _(cape streaming, one hand holding his hat on; the bike'd be white, of course, and probably have fuzzy dice hanging on it somewhere)_ was what broke through Conan's shock and made him have to clamp one hand over his mouth for silence. He'd--  
  
\--gotten a letter. Not a heist-note, not a taunt or a riddle or a challenge; a remarkably chatty letter from... a friend to a friend?  
  
Weird thought. Very nearly as weird as the letter itself.  
  
Without thinking too hard about it, he slowly raised his hand again to the doves. "Keeta?" he whispered. "Moona?" The two sidled towards his hand again instantly, and Conan slid gentle fingers into the feathers of the white one's neck; she leaned hard against his touch, and the rose-colored one meeped in annoyance at being ignored. "Shhhhh, you'll get your turn." He reached for her as well, and she butted her soft pinkish skull against his palm in obvious dove-speak for _Scritches NOW._  
  
Two or three minutes of heavy-duty dove-scritching and equally heavy-duty thinking had Conan rooting through his pockets for a pencil while his feathered guests investigated his school scuffs. A forgotten grocery list produced a writing-surface, and propping that on his knee he wrote:

_Glad to hear that you're healing. I'm not surprised that you're feeling stifled, I know the sensation all too well-- I'm a horrible patient, always have been._

  
He hesitated for a second, chewing on the end of his pencil. Should he--? Why not? If the Kid trusted him enough to write something like this, then... well. At least he could make the offer.

_I realize that you're unable to travel at the moment, but... should any of your keepers be in my old neighborhood (not the current one, you know where I mean) then they're welcome to borrow any books you might want from my old home's library. It's pretty sizable; and I can guarantee that all the Night Baron books are there, as well as the complete works of both Doyle and LeBlanc. Help yourself; nobody goes there anymore but me, and I'll keep my distance. And so will everyone else.  
  
I like the doves; friendly little things. How on earth did they find me, anyway? No, never mind, you won't tell me and I'm half afraid to find out. Afraid I don't have any treats handy for them, but I'll keep that in mind for next time. In the meantime, WHY did you use that stationary? If I didn't think you were deranged _ _ before _ _this..._

  
  
Two sets of bird-feet walked their way up Conan's legs, coming to a stop on each knee; he paused in writing to administer gentle scratches again, and the doves watched him with glinting, perfectly round eyes set like jewels into their feathered heads. "You've got a total lunatic for a master, you know that?" the boy murmured. "Absolutely, clinically insane by any definition of the word." He bit back a laugh. "Takes one to know one, though, I suppose." The doves cooed back as if they understood.  
  
Maybe they did.

_Just a thought: you might want to contact Nakamori in some fashion and explain that you're still around to make his life miserable. I'm certain he'd appreciate it (for a given value of 'appreciate'.) I'm expecting that he'll be in touch with me sometime in the near future as it is._

  
  
How did you end something like this, anyway? It wasn't like he wrote to thieves every day-- other than the times on the internet, and they... didn't exactly count.... _Whatever._ With a flourish of the thick gradeschooler's pencil, he wrote:

_Get well soon.  
KS_

  
The rosy-colored dove accepted the note back with good grace; with a final careful fingertip-scratch, Conan stood and sent the two winging back up into the blue sky above. He watched them go, brushing off his pants absentmindedly before hurrying back into the building and towards class and the boring routine he'd been able to escape for such a short while.  
  
* * *  
  
That evening, a dove tapped on Conan's bedroom window. He followed it around the house, down to the street. In the same place where Kid, wearing Shinichi's face, had once covered himself in doves and disappeared, the plump white dove from earlier that day - Moona - sat waiting patiently on the curb for Conan to pop out the doorway at the bottom of the detective agency. She cooed when he arrived, extending one wing to counterbalance herself as she stuck the opposite foot out, allowing Conan to extract the new letter from its messenger tube. It was folded and rolled tightly; Conan had flipped it open, unsealing the sticker - a toothbrush? - and was unfolding it in search of its message before he'd even thought to thank Moona.  
  
It brought him up a little short that Kid _owned_ more than one kind of ridiculous stationery, almost more than the actual fact of tonight's stationery: shaped like a pair of upended human teeth with red-veined roots for legs and big shiny smiles of their own. On the back, which was Aquafresh-striped, Kid had used the entire page for his letter, and some rows of characters angled down or up to fit into the strangely shaped space.

_Funny that you mention Nakamori. As you have no doubt conjectured, I am acquainted with him - and his eldest - in more than one capacity. I have yet to return from accompanying my mother on her "sudden trip abroad" - and when I do, I pray to Benten that I'm not so scarred as to tip my hand. Being caught would put a severe crimp in my plans, but I believe it would also break a heart. And that's rather against my m.o.  
  
My assistants - who fancy themselves my keepers - are quite industrious creatures. And they have a fine eye for treasures. As if offering me the run of the library was not enough - my dear associates returned to my side with, among other treasures, a delightful facsimilie of the unpublished manuscript of _ _ The Last Love of Arsène Lupin _ _! I must be feeling reverent today, because my fluttering heart could barely permit me hold the pages in my hands, stiff and coarse in movement as they are now. Truly, nothing I have done might deserve a gift of this caliber! But my dear man, I can force myself to wait no longer; away to the pages in utter palpitations I shall go, even before the ink dries on these final words of praise for you and your prodigious foresight!  
  
Which is very quickly, considering it's a ballpoint pen. I've never understood the desire to sound like an utter winesop - and by that I mean the rag with which you wipe up spilled liquor - just because you happen to be handwriting your words. I thought I'd try it to find the allure in it, but have to confess it's lost on me. Girls especially seem to like that sort of fluffery, though. That's one thing that tends to prevent me from reading as much British canon as I would like to; just too many winesop women. And men, to be honest. I can't believe that the entire era was actually composed of winesop folk; nothing would have been accomplished. I suppose that the hundreds of novels which cram the dollar romance bins today, were somewhat less possessed of hardy competition, then.   
  
I do sometimes wish for a different era. I occasionally see myself as my critics must, a quaint divertissement, an indiscernable one-man circus. I imagine that in decades or centuries past, I might have had somewhat more sway over public policy than your average newly released movie. At the same time, it all would have gotten so incredibly dull after the first hundred heists or so. There are only so many ways to pick an analog lock or avoid an ankle trip wire strung with cowbells. --Yes, I have done the latter.  
  
I hope you don't mind the frills of handwriting and such; there are particular items which long instinct demands I include in this letter, and only by distracting that instinct with other colorful things can I resist drawing them in.  
  
_ _♥_ _  
kk._

  
  
"Wonder how dull he would've thought it was with the homeowners laying in wait with rifles?" Conan murmured, visions of Victorian gentlemen kitted up for fox-hunting and hiding in the hedges. The era had been rather emphatically lacking in gun-control laws and pretty heavy on the if-I-own-it-I-can-defend-it mindset (or, to quote something he'd seen on the internet, 'Screw the rules, I have money!'). Kid's monocle on a plaque-- or his top-hat, for that matter-- would've been considered entirely acceptable in some 19th-century trophy rooms.  
  
The flowery language in the second paragraph had (heh) made his teeth hurt. _Thank God he stopped. Much more and even the stationary'd develop cavities._ Chuckling, the boy held up a scrap of almond-cookie that he'd stashed in one pocket earlier; Moona seemed to find this entirely acceptable too, showering crumbs down Conan's shirt as she nibbled. He found a curb nearby and sat down, half-hidden by a mailbox, to stare at the letter and think.  
  
So Kid was worried about Nakamori's daughter's reaction to his identity; it didn't take a brain-surgeon to figure out whose 'broken heart' he meant. The attitude between the two had almost been that of siblings (or possibly twelve-year-olds with crushes on each other) so no big surprise there, Shinichi supposed; and he smiled wryly, thinking of Ran. If he ever _did_ return to normal, the big question wouldn't be whether or not the Black Organization would murder him-- it'd be whether there'd exist any pieces of Kudo Shinichi  left to eradicate after Ran lit into him. Conan had no illusions about that; not all the fast talking on the planet would save him from becoming _Pâté a Tantei_ if she was angry enough.  
  
Something to think about. Or not, if he could avoid it.  
  
The peculiar stationary crinkled as he ran it between his fingers, smoothing out the tight creases once before folding it carefully and fishing out his own choice for reply; good thing he'd grabbed it on the way home from school. 'It' was a menu, blank on one side and advertising various coffees and teas to be found at a small café between the Mouris' and school, a little place on a sidestreet. During his full-sized days he'd ducked in on occasion, and every now and then he found an excuse to drop by ("We're out of coffee and Ojisan asked me to pick him up a Dark Roast with double sugar...") The closing time had '-1hr' written beside it, along with 'when you're up to it'.  
  
Why not, after all? Meeting the Kid for coffee wasn't any crazier than anything else in this mess. He chuckled again, beginning to write.

 _I can understand your worries about the scars,_ Conan wrote, _but if it's any help, the doctors believed that neither your hands nor your face would show much later damage so long as proper healing was allowed... in other words, don't push it. As for your throat, I don't know; I suppose some scarring there was inevitable. And broken hearts aren't anything I'd want on my hands either-- they're a lot harder to heal than burned skin. Or so I've heard.  
  
Please, for the love of God, can the flowery language! You can probably hear me groaning from here. You may wish you lived back in Holmesian times, but not me. I -like- my modern comforts. Give me a hot shower, modern dentistry (and are you trying to kill me via stationary?) and a lack of smallpox epidemics any day. And where would you be without your glider? Steampunk Kid?  
  
Enjoy the library; and when you're finished with your Lupin book keep me in mind, will you? I haven't read that one.  
  
KS_

  
  
Moona had vanished into the skyline before Conan headed back up the stairs; Ran met him at the top. "There you are-- dinner's almost ready." She gave him a quizzical look, her pretty face tilted just a bit to one side and the apartment's lights giving her a faint halo in the twilight. "What's so funny, Conan-kun? I heard you laughing a minute ago."  
  
Thinking about broken hearts and painful, inevitable explanations, he sobered. "Nothing, Ran-neechan," said Conan; "Just... something I read." He gave her a half-smile and followed her into the apartment.   
  
* * *  
  
 _I'm nearly ready anyway. I can do the rest of the research tonight, note tomorrow. That'd be better, more practical anyway, I might as well. The heists are the priority._  
  
"If so, then it's not the wisest plan we've ever had, rushing the _security systems_ research of a complicated heist."  
  
"It'll be fine! I've been sitting around too long anyway. I need to get moving. I need to get out of the house."  
  
 _To a coffee shop, perhaps?_  
  
"No! --I mean, I have a coffee maker right here in the house. Several of them."  
  
"That's a great idea, Kid! I'll just ring him now and invite him over--"  
  
 _You will want to stop typing_ _ **right now.**_  
  
"Oooh, testy."  
  
"Shut up. Just shut up, you smarmy circus magician. --I'll go. Alright? I'll go."  
  
 _Good thing, because you've got about five minutes before we'll be late._  
  
"Oh, _screw you_."  
  
* * *  
  
He really wasn't sure what he was expecting.  
  
 _It's a coffee shop. They serve coffee._  
  
It wasn't like he was here on a date or anything.  
  
 _What's more amusing? The idea of you on a date, or the idea of you on a date with--_  
  
 _\--Look, it's not a date, we both know it isn't._  
  
He was just here to see Edogawa.  
  
 _Liar!_  
  
...He was just here to see Kudo.  
  
 _Bzzzzt! Try again._  
  
...He was here to see _Shinichi._  
  
Kid - wearing a black turtleneck, dark jeans, and sunglasses, hair a (clean but) thoroughly tousled mess - opened the coffee shop door.  
  
*  
  
It'd been weeks since the menu-invitation, weeks where letters had alternated with chatroom conversations and where Conan's-- Shinichi's-- familiarity with trained doves had expanded to the point where he now carried snacks in his pockets most of the time. Ran had, slightly puzzled, wondered at her charge's new fondness for unsalted sunflower-seeds but had shrugged them off as just one of those things that kids ate; at least they were healthier than chewing-gum.  
  
And now he'd moved on to coffee as a, a what? A Kid-treat? Kicking at the booth's opposite seat with legs that were shy quite a few centimeters of reaching the ground, Shinichi's eyebrows went up at the mental image of luring a birdlike Kid-dove over with a proffered cup of java. Actually, he'd rather be the one drinking it; he'd had A Day, and at this point he felt he deserved a little caffeine.  
  
The door-chimes jingled, and he glanced up... and away, preferring not to startle _this_ particular breed of bird. Kid, altogether unfamiliar in dark colors and with both eyes masked for once.  
  
It had to be him, though; the expression, wary and at the same time intent, with that slight twist of a smile-- if that expression was a mask, then, Shinichi thought behind his own, it damn well didn't look like it.  
  
"K-- Conan-kun." Hiding the slip behind his smile, Kid stepped smoothly over to Shinichi's table and paused momentarily, nominally waiting for permission before taking a seat in the chair opposite. "Afternoon." He ducked his head slightly, almost a shy motion, but tugged the sunglasses off as he did so. When he looked back up, the color of his eyes was bright in the sunlight coming in from the window - a blue so rich it was almost purple. In the way that eyes shift as emotions run through them, Kid's did now, quick and constant as the surface of spangled water.  
  
Shinichi blinked. He was looking at Kid's face, not as Kid-as-Kuroba, but as Kid-as-- _Kid._ "Uh," he said cleverly. "Afternoon. Coffee?"  
  
 _I think my brain-cells just fused. At least it's me and not Nakamori,_ _he'd_ _have to go off and take a cold shower... after he got finished killing his next-door-neighbor, that is._ The eye-color; that was odd. It almost matched his own some days, and when Kid had impersonated Shinichi he'd always thought... well, contacts. But now he didn't think so.  
  
The waiter came by then (this was an old-fashioned place) for their orders: two cups, one with three sugars and the other with two creams. An observer would've been struck by the way the younger of the two at the table allowed his voice to slip back into more childish diction, despite the fact of what he was ordering. Perhaps the boy wasn't the magician of the two, but his face and voice changed as easily as his companion's expression before he turned back, shifting from Conan-kun to Kudo Shinichi again.  
  
Everyone to their own magic...  
  
Kid found himself fascinated by the changes. He hadn't had a chance to see the process in person yet, not from start to finish; but there was Shinichi, lifting his hand for the waiter and turning away from Kid as the man approached; there was Conan, innocent and more sugary than the coffee he ordered; and here was Shinichi again, regarding Kid with resolve, if also evidence that he had little clue of how to proceed. Kid couldn't help but smile, a soft sound accompanying it on his lips, in response.  
  
"Me either. I can tell you honestly that I didn't think further than walking in this door."  
  
A look of unmistakable relief flickered across the boy's face. "Yeah, well, neither of us've got much experience in talking without, ahh, filters." He shrugged, then paused as the waiter returned with their coffee. When he'd departed again, Shinichi continued. "Disguises, all that fun stuff." He glanced across at Kid's hands, innocent of gloves; the pink new skin was visibly peeling but looked healthy enough. "How're your burns coming along?"  
  
Kid frowned. "Tender." Pensively, he rubbed the back of his hand, tracing tendons and grooves in the skin with the ball of his thumb. The pink skin reddened under the pressure, too new to have enough oil to ease the touch. The simple friction of his thumb against his newly healed skin made it sting, and Kid winced away, pulling his hands apart with a sharp frown that creased his whole face.  
  
"My hands..." The worry and fear in his voice came through clearly; Kid was too preoccupied with _being_ fearful to worry about concealing it. And, in this situation -- maskless, hatless, without even his monocle on his face (it rested in his jeans pocket, a talisman against danger) -- worrying about showing a little emotion on his face would kind of be missing the point.  
  
Shinichi watched him: the nervous movements of fingers, the flash and change of expression... and looked away, giving privacy without requiring that it be asked for. "There's this stuff the Professor makes," he offered tentatively; "It speeds up cell-growth. I think Ai brought the formula with her, but it's been pretty useful. I can send some along with a dove if you want..." His voice trailed off; belatedly and with an awful knotting of his stomach, a certain fact occurred to Shinichi: that while Kid might be aware of his double identity, it wasn't at all certain that he was possessed of the facts about how he-- _or_ Ai, for that matter-- got that way.  
  
So he cast around for a change of subject; and found one, a thought he'd considered before. "...Kid? There's something I've been meaning to tell you, but in all the craziness of, well, everything, I just--" Shinichi hesitated. _"Thank you,"_ he said quietly. "Nobody said that to you, so I'm doing it now. For those four men, for all of it; I think Nakamori'd say it if he was here, along with a lot of profanity; but anyway," and the detective glanced up for a second, a flash of intense blue. "Thank you. Kind of late, but better late than never, hm?"  
  
Kid blinked. He'd never had problems seeing Shinichi within Conan before, but just then - that single moment - there _was_ no Conan in those eyes, not in their shape or their saying. Shinichi simply was there, and Kid was stabbed with a sudden memory from over a year previous, one that he was certain Conan - Shinichi - shared too.  
  
"Thank you, too. For helping me. And - well. I do think I'd like some of that ointment. I can't afford these burns, not really."  
  
He paused, hands curling around his coffee mug. "I was thinking about...the clocktower. Would you have believed this?" Kid gestured, a small circle with one hand that encompassed their table, the last two months, and the both of them. "That we'd be here?" Another pause, and Kid laughed warmly. "That's a dumb question, of course you wouldn't've. Neither would've I. But... _how_ much wouldn't you have? I think I could have dreamed it, maybe."  
  
 _The clocktower._ That was very nearly a physical memory; Shinichi could almost feel the lurch of the helicopter, feel how his borrowed gun had bucked in his hand. They'd both come out of that one with equal honors, really. "Dreamed it? Maybe; in the beginning I expected to end up talking to you through jail bars at some point," answered Shinichi ruefully, leaning his chin on one palm. "And I was looking forward to it. Hadn't a clue you could run rings around the police like that... Funny thing, though," he added with the edge of a grin. "I really _did_ want to talk to you; I wanted to figure out why you were so damned determined to keep the tower from being demolished. That... was the purpose, wasn't it?" He hiked one eyebrow up, glancing at the other as the grin quirked into a challenge. "You didn't want the diamonds, you wanted the tower itself."  
  
 _'Why?'_ was inherent in the last sentence; but Shinichi didn't ask it, or at least not aloud. He was enjoying himself.  
  
Kid nodded, so slightly that it was barely even there, the tiniest concession. His grin spoke volumes, even as he hid it behind his coffee mug. "Very good, Tantei," he murmured, and had opened his mouth to say something further when the waiter arrived to check on them. He was young, maybe five or six years older than Kid, and had an honest face. When he was a few steps away from the table, he visibly shifted out of autopilot, his smile sliding off his face as he actually _saw_ the scene in front of him: a quiet conversation between two equals, both visibly relaxed and calm as a millpond. There was some banter going on - he could see the smirky challenge in each of their expressions - and there was clearly a long history between the two.   
  
Only problem was, one of them was seven years old.  
  
"I - um - I'm sorry, am I interrupting?"  
  
Shinichi and Kid turned to look at the befuddled waiter, both of them moving like warm and well-fed cats. The rest of the coffee house clicked back into place in stages; Kid finished the puzzle more quickly than Shinichi did, sitting up straighter and keeping his alarm from his face. Beside him, Shinichi seemed frozen, clearly unable to decide whether turning on "Conan" would be more or less incriminating than the current moment. Kid made the decision for him, smoothly melting his own frozen features with an ingratiating smile.  
  
"No, thank you, but I think we'd both love another cupful. Three sugars again, Tantei- _san_?"   
  
'San,' not 'kun.' _Take the hint, Shinichi. Don't run._  
  
The dare was implicit, a verbal gauntlet; and who was he to refuse something like that? Shinichi allowed his posture to remain relaxed, glancing up at the waiter in confirmation. "Please," he said with an easy smile, as if there was nothing unusual going on there in the least. Internally, he quaked; _If this guy's Black Org, I'm screwed._ But the waiter simply blinked in even worse confusion, opened his mouth as if to say something... and nodded.  
  
As the mystified waiter's steps receded, Shinichi mock-sighed and looked at Kid from beneath lowered brows; it would've been stern coming from his former face, but unfortunately on his seven-year-old countenance it was merely amusing. "You," he informed the other, "are a pain in the ass, you know that? There're people out there who do not need to know that it's possible for anybody to be like--" He indicated his childish state with a thumb. "Lots of them, with guns. And no fashion-sense." _And that's probably the first and only joke I've ever made out loud about those bastards, come to think of it._ He tugged off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes where the headaches liked to settle.  
  
Kid had as much of a detective in himself as Shinichi had a thrillseeker's daring. The scent of a big story was thick in the air between them, but Kid knew the other wouldn't give up the details if he was pushed. A different approach was needed, one that at least carried the text of subtlety, even if they both did know its subtext was still just as nosy.  
  
Over his coffee mug's rim, Kid's smile was only half-visible. The delighted amusement in his eyes, however, was more than enough to accompany his light tones. "Earlier, I was about to tell you that the clocktower had been a personal motivation, a moment of selfishness. Most of the time, I'm grateful that possessing good aim seems to be inclusive of dressing sharply - I have it, while yourself and our mutual darkly-clad irritants do not."  
  
Shinichi snorted, raising his own cup to his lips. "I hit exactly what I was aiming f-- Wait." The coffee actually sloshed, and he set the cup down undrunk. _"'Mutual'?_ " The word was voiced in a slightly higher register, driving once more home the fact that no matter the brain behind the vocal cords, they hadn't yet broken. "You have-- Oh." Palms flat on the table to either side of his drink, Shinichi closed his eyes briefly. "Please tell me you aren't being stalked by people in black trenchcoats. Please." The question could've been meant lightly; it sounded almost facetious, if you ignored the way the boy's face had paled.  
  
Kid's grin didn't falter, just took on a disbelieving quirk. "Of course I'm not being stalked by people in black trenchcoats!" He took a sip of his coffee, calmly waiting with eyes half-closed until Shinichi had done the same. "It would really be a waste of their resources to stalk me when it's so much easier to simply lay in wait for me at my heists."  
  
The heat of the liquid sliding down his throat was soothing, allowing the detective to center himself and drag his mind back out of the fogs of paranoia. _Breathe, Kudo, breathe. More information doesn't mean the situation's changed, it just means you have better tools to deal with it. And just because it_ _sounds_ _the same doesn't mean it_ _is_ _the same. Don't assume._ "Right," he said lightly, sitting back and cradling his cup in both small hands. "So much more efficient that way. Mine are more the infiltrate-the-highest-levels-of-office type-- you know, police, government, technology; that sort."   
  
Shinichi took another drink, savoring the taste as it brought the world back into focus; it really was excellent coffee. "They're very good at cleanup, too," he added quietly. "Data systems, buildings, papertrails... people..." He shrugged. "Good with experimental pharmaceuticals too."  
  
That last tasted bitter even to say; all the decent coffee in the world couldn't soothe it, and he took a second to compose his expression before glancing back up.  
  
Kid raised an eyebrow at that, mouth pressed into a thin line. "Ah." That was all he offered in response to Shinichi's implicit explanation. _So that's the 'how' of it all,_ he mused to himself, turning to wave the waiter down. _Not that knowing changes a damn thing._  
  
The waiter stepped crisply up to the table, looking between both thief and detective in equal balance. "Can I get you two--" He paused only for a fraction of a second, then continued with a self-conscious smile, looking at Conan like he was trying to simultaneously address him and talk down to him. "--you two gentlemen another cup?"  
  
"Thank you, but no, I'd like the check," Kid said, with a politely shallow nod. "Briskly, if you will?"  
  
"Of course, sir," the waiter responded, smiling again before departing to ring up their bill.  
  
Kid turned back to Shinichi, unable for a moment to see the man within the boy. It was just Conan's scared-and-trying-not-to-show-it face, big eyes, honest mouth, staring back at him.  
  
"If we're to continue this conversation, we'll need to switch locale," Kid pointed out. "Really, we should have two topics ago. I have several ideas, but am amenable to any of them." With a twist of a smirk, humor in his eyes to ease the moment's weight, he teased, "Your place or mine?"  
  
A little bit of Conan's hunted look faded from his face -- only a little bit -- as he ignored the joke altogether. "Neither. The library." Kid nodded, understanding implicitly. Conan - Shinichi - frowned slightly, then added in a lower tone: "And get your face covered between here and there. You look too much like a dead man to take chances."  
  
The check was attended to easily enough (though Shinichi wordlessly and with a touch of defiance covered the tip) and the two left the café, Kid slipping his shades on as they stepped out into the evening. While they had talked the sun had dipped below the skyline, though it had nearly an hour left of light before it reached the horizon. Shinichi noticed his companion's swift visual time-check and shrugged slightly. "I'm not expected back for a while," he said, breaking the silence as they walked. "Ran thinks I'm at Agasa's, and I'll head over there afterwards." He wasn't quite sure of the exact time, but it wasn't all that late yet.  
  
He'd left his watch at home, of course.  
  
By mutual, if unspoken agreement, they took a route towards the Kudo residence and its library that avoided the main streets (and the streets proper fairly often, too, by use of various alleyways.) It took a little longer to get there this way, but their trek for the most part meandered along the backs of restaurants and shops; listeners would be far more conspicuous there than on Beika's more public sidewalks.  
  
"So," drawled Kid, bringing the conversation back to its most recent cliffhanger, "am I to assume that I'm missing, presumed dead? Or should that be the other way around, considering that the authorities haven't recovered a body?" He rather nonchalantly buffed his nails on a shirtcuff. "I'll have to keep that in mind for my grand reappearance." The thief chuckled, a stray ray of sunlight reflecting white from one lens of his sunglasses in a perfect circle of obscurity as he ducked his head. "Or perhaps you were you referring to my current state of health...?"  
  
"Myself, actually," Shinichi answered with a wry tone, "Though 'dead, presumed missing,' sounds more like the both of us now that I think about it. No, I simply meant that..." How to phrase this safely? "After the case involving the Romanoffs, and the eggs...that night...you didn't need contact lenses, or much else, I think. At a glance, someone might suppose that you're the _wrong_ 'missing, presumed dead' person."  
  
And if the wrong person saw Kid (especially in _this_ neighborhood, so close to both the Mouris' and the Kudo residence), that would make things go pear-shaped in a very horrible way. "You do look a lot like me, you know; or I used to look like you, whatever." Shinichi craned his head slightly to look at the face above him; it was a bit like walking with Heiji, what with the usual problem of talking more or less to the other's beltline. "That could cause you more trouble than you'd believe." The boy's voice dropped very low as he automatically glanced up and around at their surroundings. "Other people, too; if they believed that I was still alive and capable of breaking their cover, then-- my family, my friends, anyone I'd had frequent contact, they'd all suffer 'tragic accidents' or simply vanish. And if they believed I was hiding out as _you_... It's a good thing that your, ahh, 'civilian' life is well-documented."  
  
"Rather self-centered of you, Conan," Kid laughed, his light tone mismatched with the very pointed glance he sent toward the bushes and fences around them. He made sure Shinichi saw it, a reminder that merely whispering was far from enough protection in their current location. "As if that's the only reason I might need documentation of the life I live! I assure you, I have pedigree papers and the whole lot. My 'civilian life,' as you call it, is quite real."  
  
"And," Kid sighed after a moment, "So is my schoolwork! I'm going to have a _mountain_ of missed work to make up...and classroom chore shifts...and club minutes to read up on. Being _sick_ sucks." His tone shifted through this speech, until by the end of it he sounded just like Kuroba Kaito had when Conan encountered him in the park. But Kid's eyes hadn't changed. Shinichi didn't know how to explain it, but looking at Kid wasn't the same as looking at Kuroba-kun. Rather similar to the way that Shinichi could hold up 'Conan's' mannerisms as a mask - as if he were an entirely separate person.  
  
It was an interesting thought, and one that had occurred a time or two before: two people, one body. The division seemed to be more marked internally in Kid/Kuroba's case, while in Conan/Shinichi's it was more external and contrived. It wasn't, thought Shinichi, that Conan didn't have a life of his own-- he did; but it was a life under ownership and control, sort of a full-personality mask. Kid, though... and Kuroba...  
  
Shinichi didn't quite get it, whatever was going on there. And that made him _twitch._ Asking, though, was out of the question, so as they walked he chose a different line of conversation.  
  
"Being 'officially away' sucks too; I don't know how I'm going to catch up if-- when I get back to normal. Night classes, remedial testing I guess." Shinichi kicked at a soda can that had spilled out onto the alley pavement from a dumpster; they were leaving the business section now and were only a block or so away from the Kudo house. "And as for me being self-centered, what else can I be? Besides," he added with irony, "it's in-character; little kids are the most self-centered things alive."  
  
"The great Edogawa Conan? The star of his class, the brilliant child savant, the shotglass detective? In _remedial testing?_ " Kid put a hand to his heart, feigning faintness. "Surely second grade won't be _that_ bad."  
  
They rounded the alley's corner, and Shinichi fixed a dour eye on Kid. _"Crayons._ Lining up _holding hands._ Kids still learning _bladder-control,"_ he said succinctly. "And nobody'll believe you're capable of doing so much as wiping your own nose without assistance, and everybody's taller than you, and if you look at some kid crosseyed on the playground he either wants to beat you up or burst into tears, and... my brain just hurts thinking about it." He groaned. "And oh my GOD I'd forgotten what kinds of piranhas cute little girls can be, they're the worst. If you piss them off, they cry at you or get their friends mad and then they pack together like wolves, and they tell  your friends, and then it's game over." His mock diatribe, no more serious than Kid's drama, had an underlying thread of desperation to it. "Honestly? I don't think I liked kids much before I got stuck back in gradeschool." Shinichi sighed, but there was a small curve to his lips. "Bunch've little savages, and now I'm one of the tribe again."  
  
Hands in his pockets, Kid paced beside Shinichi and listened to the diminuitive young man vent what sounded like a much-belabored pet topic. "...Do they notice?" Kid asked, after a silent moment. "That you dislike them so much?"  
  
The detective snorted. "Oh, I like them a lot better now than I did," he said wryly. "I really do. Nothing like walking in their shoes to give you a little perspective, even if the shoes're gradeschool-scuffs and the view's barely a meter off the ground. And most of them are decent enough; Ayumi, Mitsuhiko and Genta, they're-- I guess I've adopted them, or they've adopted me." He laughed softly. "Ayumi-kun... you should've heard her after you landed on her balcony that time; you've got a burgeoning little groupie there. Mitsuhiko, though, he just wants to try out your glider." Shinichi was silent for a long moment as they neared the Kudo residence gate, and he ran one finger along the stone and metal wall that enclosed the yard. "They're good kids, all of them."  
  
"Landed...where?" Kid searched his memory. Seven year old little girls, plus balcony, plus being in full costume (rather than in blacks for recon work)...  
  
"Oh! That one." He smiled, amused, and raised a disbelieving eyebrow for Shinichi's benefit. "...You know, we ran into her again, later. Taught her a few juggling tricks in the park, but she didn't seem terribly interested. It was supposed to be a little inside joke on myself, for letting her see me twice, but I suppose the joke's foiled since the second time didn't seem to have made an impression."  
  
Shinichi paused outside his old home's gate, blenching internally at the thought of Ayumi in training to Kid; _it didn't happen,_ he told himself firmly-- and then blinked.  
  
'We'? _'We ran into her again later'...??_ He allowed the odd wording to slide for the moment. "So that's where she learned those; I wondered. Keep walking; there's an entrance around back we can use."  
  
* * * * *


	6. "Lemonade, The Shadow, complicated"

_**Chapter Six**_ _ **:  "lemonade, The Shadow, complicated"  
**_  
  
The Kudo family house was quite large by Beika City standards; three stories plus a basement and a rooftop deck in the back, and a largish yard that had seen better days; now a well-hidden gate opened smoothly up from the furthest corner and allowed the two into a low-ceilinged passage, brick and mortar. 

"My Tousan said he always wanted a place with secret tunnels," explained Shinichi, levering the heavy faux-stone gate shut with practiced ease despite his size, "and when he had the house built he made sure he got them. There're a couple of hidden panels too; goes with having a mystery-writer in the family, I guess."   
  
The power bills had been taken care of, so a flick of a finger brought the cellar lights on before they climbed the steps up to the main house. Shinichi sighed, shoulders drooping as he tugged his glasses off and tossed them onto a table. "Make yourself at ...home. Well, sort of now, I guess." He shrugged off his jacket, waving at a nearby door (the cellar stairs had come up into the house's main kitchen.) "Library's through there; I'm going to grab a snack and something non-caffeinated-- you okay with lemonade? I mostly keep frozen stuff here, since I don't make it over all that often anymore."   
  
There were several conflicting forces currently holding sway over the Kaitou Kid at that moment, and two of them read as follows:   
  
Having just been invited into his rival's private retreat - previous library offers notwithstanding - the logical thing for a master thief and magician to do would be to subdue Conan, then make a full circuit of the house, including trap doors, hidden rooms, passways and resources, including the (inevitable) storehouse of resources once employed by the famous high school detective before his accident. The likelihood of gems was low; the Kudos would have cleaned the mansion out to minimize the effects of any inevitable robberies or break-ins. But the information that could be gleaned couldn't be pricetagged.   
  
On the other hand, having just been invited into an intellectual equal's private retreat, having gained both Shinichi's confidence and access to several of his secrets, the logical thing for a master thief and revenge-seeking vigilante to do would be to gamble on good faith, employing emotional leverage if possible to secure that from Shinichi, and pool their resources regarding the men in black and their varied missions, as well as the information that the Kid possessed regarding various disappearances that may or may not have been able to be explained by logical, non-conspiracy-theorist-friendly methods; and the information that Shinichi might possess regarding the proliferation - or smothering - of talk on various levels, both industry and consumer, about noteworthy, unique, or otherwise unusual gems, jewels, or the purported contents of high-profile locked safes.   
  
_"Or you could just kiss him."_   
  
_**Shut up,**_ Kid hissed at Kaito, furiously snarling at the mental image of the magician's smirky, insouciant glare. _For Benten's sake,_ _ **I'm**_ _supposed to be the one who doesn't know when to shut up. What is your_ _problem_ _?_   
  
_"You are stuck on him. You went out to_ _coffee_ _with him."_   
  
Kid set his mouth in a tight line, unable to deny either point. Tersely, he ground out: _Your point? My fuse is at about two centimeters right now._   
  
_"You went out to_ _coffee_ _with a_ _detective_ _who knows about_ _ME_ _. And you're stupid enough to trust that he's not going to abuse that knowledge as soon as some 'greater good' demands it."_   
  
_You've seen Shinichi in action as much as I have. He's not that sort of detective._   
  
_"Because you know him SO well, Kaitou-_ _sama_ _,"_ Kaito snarled at him, voice fairly dripping with disdain.   
  
Kid did a double take. _Kaito, what's..._ He extended the mental equivalent of a hand on the other's shoulder, but the magician shrugged it away. _What's wrong?_   
  
_"He knows about me. He knows about me, Nakamori is eventually going to know about me, and as soon as I go back to_ _school,_ _ **she**_ _is going to know too, and she will not talk to me_ _again_ _. And meanwhile,_ _you_ _are making_ _friends_ _with the_ _detective_ _."_   
  
Kid stood still in the hall, an utterly dumbfounded expression soaking his features through and through as the figures added up in his head. Faintly, he could hear Shinichi asking him something from the other room, but Kid's back was turned and Shinichi wasn't yelling yet, and this was more important.   
  
Kid had always been the beloved one. They both knew it. But Kaito had always had his beloved one. One heart as compared to Kid's masses: and the scales came out about even. Now, because of Kid, Kaito stood to lose all that he'd had, and Kid had gained what Kaito scrabbled so hard to keep: One, solitary, true friend.   
  
"I am so sorry, my friend," Kid whispered, hanging his head. The hands at his sides formed loose fists, Kaito's anger and determination mixed with Kid's sinking groundlessness as he realized what he was doing to his partner.   
  
Behind him, Shinichi's voice was getting louder.   
  
"--wrong? Kid, did you hear me? Is there something wrong?"   
  
Bag of crab-chips in one hand and a frozen can of lemonade concentrate in the other, Shinichi stared warily at the dark figure paused between kitchen and library. The thief had taken a few steps, slowed, stopped... and swayed, very briefly, in place. _What the hell's wrong with him? He seemed okay. Did he overdo it or something?_ "Kid? Kid, listen to me, if you're feeling sick go sit down for God's sake." The chips and juice went onto the counter and Shinichi started forward, one hand outstretched.   
  
It may have been instinct that stopped him a meter away or so, allowing the hand to drop to his side. "Kid?" he asked uncertainly, hating how his voice rose childishly high. "Can you even hear me? Hello?"   
  
Without turning, Kid raised one hand to shoulder height, waving Shinichi's concern off -- well, trying to reassure him, really. But it was hard to do that with Kaito's back turned to him, and the embarrassment of his own blindness looming large in all his senses. "I can hear you, Tantei." He found a chair shakily, sitting down and hiding his face between his knees, arms folded around his head to complete the shield. "I will be alright in a moment."   
  
"Yeeeeaah, I can see that." _Not._ Water hissed and gurgled in the kitchen faucets for a moment as Shinichi allowed it to run clear before filling a glass; his stepstool scraped against the tiles as he hastily climbed down and headed into the library. "Here, drink this." The face above the dark turtleneck was hidden for the moment, but the thief's movements were shaky, lacking his usual grace. Passing over the glass, the young detective sat down as well on a couch a few feet away.   
  
_He was fine 'til we got inside; does he think this is some kind of a what, a_ _trap_ _? Hell if I know why it's not, but it's NOT, it's... I've... missed this: just talking to a friend. Agasa's a mentor, almost an uncle to me; the kids are great, but not-- and I don't see Heiji all that often, sometimes not for months even though we email and... Ran can't be, not anymore. I wish, God, so much... What did I do?_ All of this passed in a flash of apprehension through Shinichi's mind, as brief as the other's moment of unsteadiness. "Kid?" he asked again, and this time the worry was all too evident in his voice. "You want to tell me what's wrong here?"   
  
Kid's voice was tired, his shoulders slumped, as he raised his head to look at Shinichi from under more dark shadows than his unruly cloud of hair should rightfully have cast. "It's not just heists where my Number One Rule applies, Shinichi, but I seem to be breaking it all the time these days. I merely...realized yet another of my transgressions, and it took me aback."   
  
"'No-one gets hurt'," quoted Shinichi slowly; this once, he didn't drop his gaze but stared back, blue into blue. "Who're you hurting right now?" An expression of perplexed concentration that did not belong on a face as young as his appeared to be darkened the detective's own eyes. After a moment, though, those eyes widened. "Not me, not anyone else.... _yourself?"_   
  
The library-- the entire house-- was silent.   
  
Shinichi swallowed hard, pushing himself from the couch and turning half away. "Look," he said at last. "I'm not pretending that this is in any way not weird or breaking the rules or... but if you--" He had to pause for a second, collect himself and bring his own thoughts under control.   
  
_He does think this is a trap; or that it'll be a trap. Or that I'll use what I've learned against him. Or... No. Being able to step outside the game of Cops and Robbers for a little while, being able to breathe; that's important or at least to me it is. I_ _ **need**_ _this. And I think maybe he does too._   
  
"If you think I'm going to betray you, think again." Shinichi's voice was sharper than he'd intended, but it was hard to smooth it down. "I'm supposed to be one of the good guys, remember? So we're outside the usual heistnote-pursuit regime, so what? I'm making this up as I go along too, but--" He dragged one hand through his hair, trying to put something very elusive into words; it was tortuously difficult, but he tried. "Look, will this help? What I learned outside the heist doesn't have a _goddamned thing_ to do with what happens  during one, okay? Who you are right now, that's right now; who you'll be then, that's different... and they don't have a thing to do with each other."   
  
Shinichi's fists clenched. "...anymore than who I used to be has anything to do with who I'll be when I go home to Ran tonight," he finished a little bleakly. "Now, do you want the damned lemonade or not?" Stomping back into the kitchen, he snatched the thawing can of concentrate up and dragged the stepstool back into place.   
  
Kid watched him go. Shinichi's defiance was aimed at Kid's sudden mood, their overall situation, and Shinichi's curse, as it were; but Kid could see that he didn't extend that defiant frustration toward the simple inevitabilities of his new life. The stepstool, for example -- Shinichi simply used the tool as needed, without angsting that it _was_ necessary.   
  
Kaito watched too, anger and the outside edges of a good cry warring for territory on his face in Kid's mind's eye.   
  
_"If I'm the stepstool, I'm going to get dirt on me, and it doesn't mean that you think I'm an ugly stepstool. It just means that sometimes, I have to be a stepstool."_   
  
A lump in Kid's throat prevented him from answering, mentally or out loud. Instead he extended a line of comfort, a positive leyline of sorts, and felt strong relief when Kaito accepted it, letting them again be linked. He tried for a long moment to come up with anything to say, but in the end simply had to abstain, unable to find big enough words. Kaito understood.   
  
Focusing back on the room, Kid coughed to clear his throat, bringing his attention back to Shinichi as he navigated the kitchen, producing glasses and a pitcher.   
  
"I would love some lemonade, Shinichi. May I help?"   
  
The boy shot him a sideways look, a sharp one-- not sharp as in angry or disbelieving, but sharp in the way that a surgeon might use when examining a patient. What he saw was apparently enough to allow the look to lose some of its edge if not its point; but all he said was, "Sure. Top shelf over the sink; I think there's a couple of large bowls up there. Grab one, will you?" That accomplished, the crab chips went into the bowl; and drinks and snacks were carted into the library proper.   
  
Round in shape and more than two stories tall if you included the domed skylight that cupped the roof like half of a glass egg, it was easily the most impressive room in the house. Rolling ladders were affixed to tracks built above the shelves, and the shelves themselves were no less than three meters tall. The comfortable island of couches and chairs that the two had occupied actually filled an annex to the library, sort of a side-room with broad windows (now heavily curtained against the owners' absence); a second entrance led directly to the front of house and the library itself was furnished with scattered chairs and tables, including one truly imposing desk.   
  
"Tousan actually doesn't do much writing there; he's got a small office upstairs where he does most've the work." Waving one hand at the massive walnut thing, Shinichi sat his glass down on an end-table and with a less-than-dignified hitch and shove managed to take what was obviously a favorite seat; the chair's leather cushion and arms showed a lot of wear. Small, dusty-socked feet (he'd ignored the house-scuffs) went onto a small table that showed many smudged heel-prints already, and the detective almost seemed to deflate as he sank back into the overstuffed chair.   
  
"Home," he muttered, eyes lidding nearly closed; unnoticed lines of stress that didn't belong where they were grew less incised, and Shinichi let his head drop against the leather. "This place is almost the only one left where I really relax anymore. I haven't lived here in nearly a year-- God, Conan'll be celebrating his eighth birthday in the spring-- but it's still what I think of when I say 'home'. Kind of stupid, I suppose."   
  
"Why?" Kid settled into the chair beside Shinichi's, of similar make but much lighter wear. "What's one year against seventeen or so? This _is_ your home...you're just in exile at the moment." A wry smile quirked his face out of symmetry, and he performed his next line with all the overdone drama of a hackneyed Shakespearian. "An exiled prince? Banished, cursed to roam the lost shores of Elementary until your Dear Watson comes to spirit you away, back to the Baker Street of your heart." For a moment, Kid held his final pose, one hand clenched over his heart, the other outreached toward the bookshelves' third tier, currently standing in for Elementary (or perhaps Dear Watson; the blocking needed work), face uplifted and eyes squeezed shut in ascendant hope. Then - as though entirely separate from the rest of his pose - his head alone moved, chin tucked down, gaze narrowing as it slid smoothly to Shinichi, and the singularly Kidlike sparkle of mischief laughed silently along with his audience.   
  
Two childlike eyebrows rose, very slowly, to be lost in a hairline that needed combing. Without cracking so much as a smile, the boy solemnly brought both hands together in a slow clap of applause. "Braaaa _vo,"_ he announced, straightfaced; and then lost it completely, laughing into one hand, a little boy's laughter with all the cadence and shape of an adult's. "You," he said, hand still covering half his face, "are SUCH a lunatic. Totally certifiable. Pass me the chips, will you?"   
  
The tension of earlier moments had been rather thoroughly broken, swept up and thrown into the trash; high time, too.   
  
They talked for a little while-- nothing consequential, just books and authors and _have you ever read_ or _there's this series_... Twenty minutes later found them on the upper level, Shinichi perched halfway up a ladder while his guest sat perfectly at his ease on the balcony railing. "--got a lot of his original inspiration from cheap American 1930's pulp novels like these," finished the detective; he'd located his father's stash of facsimile editions of _The Shadow._ "Some people'll read anything."   
  
"Ex _cuuuuuuse_ me!" Kid caroled, snatching the book from Shinichi's small hand and flipping through it with relish. " _Some_ people appreciate the original Poker Faces! Give me _Black Mask_ serials any day."   
  
Shinichi pulled a reproduction of _Shadow Magazine_ from 1936 and waved it at the thief. "He had a nose the size of a  cannon. And he spent half the time either hypnotizing, shooting or laughing people into nervous breakdowns!" Hooking one arm around the ladder, he brandished the cover (which, true to form, showed a freakish black-clad figure with gleaming eyes and equally shiny guns, blazing away) and rolled his own eyes. "You and Tousan--! He got hold of some translated episodes of the radio play when I was really small; they used to scare the crap out of me. Some people'll _write_ anything..."   
  
Kid cackled, folding his legs into the rungs of the railing so he could lean back and relax. Well, "relax," for values of the word where suspending your back and bottom over empty air by way of levering your legs against the railings resulted in an image that just begged to be captioned: _invisible lounge chair_. Kid waved a hand dismissively, snatching away the _Shadow_ volume as well, poring through it with happy eyes. "You just don't like these Some people, do you? Careful, prejudice starts in the home!"   
  
"When 'some people' happens to be Tousan in both cases," said Shinichi as he rolled his eyes, "prejudice can go take a flying f--aack!" Leaning forward, one foot had slipped; he regained his balance easily enough and hooked an ankle around a step unconcernedly, eyeing Kid's own perch. "How do you DO that, anyway?" he asked, not considering his own rather uncommon save to be anything other than common. "Velcro? Grappling hooks? Magnets?"   
  
"Magic," Kid responded easily, the word rolling from his lips like the name of a lover. He smiled at Shinichi's footing, then turned his expression back on the boy himself. "You alright there?" His smirk seemed to hint more than he'd say.   
  
"What? Oh yeah, fine." Shinichi blinked, and then allowed a matching smirk to rise. "Magic. Figures..." He pulled out another facsimile of the magazine and considered the cover. [This one](http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g117/DynographK/theshadow0178.jpg) dated from 1939 and portrayed the Mysterious Avenger under the focus of a flashlight beam, guns-- once again-- blazing. "Let's see; hat, formal suit, cape, face half-covered... no, can't see why you'd be interested. At least you don't use regular guns." Shinichi made a face, thumbing through the pages. "If I had a hundred yen for every corpse with a bullet-hole in it that I've seen, I'd be _hiring_ some genius chemist to work up a cure instead of depending on, ahh, other parties. Not that I'd expect you to shoot people; not your style," the detective added absentmindedly. He flipped to the back, reading the ads.   
  
"It's just so boring," Kid sighed, leaning back into empty air as though onto the flat surface of a cushioned bed, making a pillow of his hands beneath his head. Casually, he rolled his head to the side, turning his gaze from the vaulted ceiling of the library to his companion. "Guns, no matter what kind of them, only do one thing, and they're pretty predictable in how they do it too. Some of them are faster or quieter or shoot farther than others, but they all just use explosions to shoot hunks of metal. They don't deceive, or baffle, or play coy, or entertain, or bemuse, or frustrate, or dance, or flip, or tiptoe, or click their heels, or flourish, or offer flowers, or anything interesting. They just kill, and that's damn boring."   
  
"Not if you're on the receiving end of the bullet," pointed out Shinichi rather dryly. "If you are, things get very exciting-- briefly." He turned a page, not quite ignoring Kid's utterly improbable pose but determined to say nothing more regarding theoretical grappling hooks in the thief's pants. "That's one of the reasons I enjoy your heists," he muttered, more or less thinking out loud. "Nobody gets killed." He closed the facsimile, hitching sideways to slide the issue back onto the shelves... and blinked.   
  
_Did I just say that I 'enjoyed' his heists? I did. That may come back to haunt me._ After all, look at the sorts of things that had been devised in the past to keep Nakamori and that blond detective (what was his name again?) entertained.   
  
_Oh, right._ "Hakuba," he said thoughtfully.   
  
"Hnn?" Kid raised an eyebrow. "Oh, him. He's a bit of a prat, you know. No sense of humor whatsoever."   
  
Meanwhile, a little voice in the back of Kid's head smiled ironically. _"You have a new fan?"_   
  
"He's always been a fan," Kid answered fondly, letting Shinichi misappropriate which "he" was referenced, even as Kaito, flipping cards back and forth in Kid's mind's eye, laughed. There was still a hint of pain in the magician's expression, but also true enjoyment of Kid's happiness in Shinichi's company --- a realignment of values between the pair, returning to what was _right_ for them.   
  
"Hm," grunted Shinichi thoughtfully, a glint of amusement in his eye as he remembered the blond teenager's expression in the helicopter over Sunset Mansion when Kid literally fell out of his reach, like a kestrel avoiding a larger hawk's talons. It hadn't exactly brightened _his_ day at the time either, though finding Mouri tied up in his underwear in a gas-station bathroom later on had cheered him up quite a lot.   
  
(There was something niggling at the back of Shinichi's mind-- something he should be doing. Something about... never mind; he'd remember it later.) "There's fans, and then there's _fans,"_ he answered, mind veering uneasily back to a subject that they'd managed to avoid since arriving at the Kudo home. "There's the kind like your shrieking fangirls, there's ones like--" The detective stopped short before saying, actually _saying_ 'myself and Hakuba'; he was  not going to lump himself in with obsessed types like the half-Briton. "--like half Nakamori's squad," he finished lamely, and winced at Kid's ceiling-directed smirk. "And then there's the kind that, according to what you said earlier, likes to express their applause with gunshot." One sock-clad foot tucked up beneath him, Shinichi raised his own eyebrow. "Hm?"   
  
"Where does that put yourself, then?" Kid asked, rolling onto his side to face Shinichi, bracing himself with one elbow propped against the air. "What about my fans who know where to find me, who can keep up with me, who actually stand half a chance of touching my cape as I jump just out of your reach?" He studied Shinichi as he posed the question, their gazes on a level, his voice soft, familiar, and comfortable, despite the challenge of his words. With his brows drawn down - focus, concentration, critical attention - yet his mouth quirked softly - quiet amusement and pleasure, and the suggestion of faint wistfulness - and a crinkle at the corners of his eyes that could as easily be sadness as humor - Kid's expression was a nuanced puzzle to read.   
  
Full stop; Shinichi sat quite still, giving the question the same sort of concentration that he'd apply to a clue, a motive, a consequence, an accusation. It deserved as much, and it needed answering. "I don't know that there's a word," he said slowly. "'Adversaries' should be correct, given the situation, but I don't think it applies at this point. 'Friends' shouldn't work, but applies too well. So if a language doesn't have the correct term, does it actually need one?" He hiked one shoulder in a shrug, oddly at ease with both Kid's question and his own response.   
  
It would have been a simple thing to simply toss the question off or to answer back with a joke or a comfortable lie. But, swinging one leg and kicking the ladder-rung below him, Shinichi gave back a self-deprecating little smile, one that said: _Who knows? Not this tantei, not this time. And who cares?_   
  
Kid's smile sliced open into a broad, toothy grin. "Well then!" He rolled back onto his back, stretching his arms out above his head, fingers laced; several joints crackled. "We'll just have to make our own word for it!" He grinned, touching the fingers of one hand to the point where his hat brim should have been, and inclined his head as he angled his hand -- tipping his hat. Razor cards appeared in both his hands, first the free hand, then the hat hand; with a wink to allay Shinichi's sudden wariness at the sight of the weapons, Kid simply folded his hands back toward his wrists, flicking the cards first in, then out. Their edges followed the path that the cutting edge of a butterfly knife might as it was unfolded, and as they crossed the empty air directly above Kid's wrists, high-pitched twangs, and the silvered reflection of light off of severed fishline, played Kid's hand.   
  
With a laugh, the thief pushed off of the library balcony railing with his toes even as he began to fall, throwing his legs over his head in a perfect, knife-like flip, his posture precise and artistic through the entire motion. In his close-fitting street clothing, without the bulk of the cape and layers of the suit to obscure his size and build, it was much easier to follow the movements and twists of his athletic frame as he moved, arms out for balance and toes pointed, heels held together, spine straight. He landed on the arm of the chair which matched Shinichi's favorite with a light puff of dust, heels together in the second standard ballet position, his knees bent to take the impact. Predictably, his gaze was fixed not on his footing but his audience. He came to rest, holding the pose for a moment, then hopped lightly off the chair to the floor, and laughed up at Shinichi. Shockingly, a little bit of embarrassment was clearly threaded through his laughter, underlined by the way one hand fidgeted briefly with the hair above his ear, smoothing it down.   
  
"Heh, sorry! It was worth doing a flip over. And I'd been wanting to try that since we climbed up there."   
  
There was a protracted silence, followed by a strangled sound that might have been a cough—or a laugh. Hands gripping either side of the ladder and knuckles showing white, the Detective of the East followed the flight of the thin support lines down with his eyes as they curled and floated. “Nylon fishing-twine; thank God,” he said into the pause, face perfectly deadpan. “Thought my parents'd forgotten to pay the gravity bill this month.” With great dignity Shinichi climbed down the ladder and descended towards the ground level in a more prosaic fashion, during which he did his best to restart his heart. 

 

 _\--goddamn thief scaring the living SHIT out’ve me—_  
  
It had, admittedly, been rather cool to watch, especially from his vantage point on the ladder; first off, you didn’t generally get the chance to see Kid perform in regular light. Moonlight, the beams of mounted police high-intensity spotlights, the fitful flash of red and blue from far below: none of them allowed a truly clear glimpse. Of course, that was part of the act, wasn’t it? Display, display, but keep the mystery alive.   
  
As he descended the last few steps, Shinichi eyed the chair that Kid had chosen as his own personal landing pad. “Don’t try that with the other one,” he said calmly; “It’s got a wobbly leg. Last thing you need is a broken ankle to add to the rest of your on-the-job injuries, ne?”   
  
"I'd noticed you like that one best," Kid answered with a smirk, perching on the arm of the unfavored recliner. "So it was a safe guess that it would be the less stable of the two. Especially since its right arm's padding got pulled free and slides around now." He waited the beat for Shinichi to look, reflexively, at the chair arm in question, then back at him, and continued his explanation just quickly enough to cut off the detective's chance for response. "--I simply noticed that it slid, and you had to grip it more tightly than the other, when you were hoisting yourself into the chair earlier." He left unsaid the smarmy followup: _You're not the only detective among us._   
  
Shinichi merely quirked one eyebrow up in salute; his mental comment of _Smartass_ went equally unsaid. "So," he remarked, herding all the appropriate cats back into their figurative corral once more, "about those fans of yours, the ones with the guns..."   
  
Kid frowned. "Heavy thought needs food to sustain it, tantei. It's getting late...and I don't think you'll want to eat after I've said my piece. Let's order in and get comfortable...and then I'll tell you why the Kaitou Kid came back after eight years."   
  
Shinichi grimaced. "Can't. Having a delivery brought to a house that's supposedly shut up while the owners are out've the country? Not a good idea. But I have a contingency plan," he added. "Frozen pizza work for you?"   
  
"...I should have thought of that," Kid muttered, amused and irked at himself in equal measure, as he followed Shinichi out to the kitchen.   
  
*   
  
Some time later (approximately two large ham-and-pinapple-with-extra-cheese pizzas' worth)... "--and Agasa not only blew out his back wall, he set his pants on fire and Kaasan ended up putting him out with the garden hose. Think I was about nine or ten." Shinichi waved a half-eaten slice in punctuation. "I've known him since I was small-- smaller than this." He grimaced and took another bite.   
  
"You're not so small," Kid chuckled, reaching around Shinichi's hands, dwarfed by his pizza slice, to grab another slice for himself. "But still small enough to have a bedtime."   
  
Shinichi gave him a dirty look, opened his mouth to answer... and his jaw dropped. "TIME! Oh shit! Agasa's, I'm supposed to be at Agasa's, aagh--" He fumbled in one pocket, gave that up and looked around wildly. "Phone, phone, where's my phone?"   
  
The phone was located with Conan's discarded glasses, and Shinichi spent a few agitated moments soothing the voice on the other end of the line. After a bit he sat the cell down with a sigh, glancing back at the thief. "Good thing the Professor's used to me getting lost in my books," he said morosely. "He was getting worried; ten more minutes and he'd be showing up through the _other_ secret tunnel. As it is, I need to be back at Ran's sooner or later." There was regret in the words, and as he sat back down the detective sighed. "Now. Back to what we were talking about...?"   
  
Kid frowned. "Thought that was going to be enough of a distraction," he muttered. Gallows humor aside, Kid pushed aside his plate, wiped his hands carefully clean, and ran one hand through his hair with a very shallow sigh. "The story I have is somewhat more straightforward than yours, I'm sure. People get murdered every day, more frequently than that when the _'fans'_ in question are involved. Eight years ago, before I knew anything about the Kaitou Kid other than what the newspaper told me, he was murdered."   
  
Shinichi nodded; he'd expected something of the sort, and from what he'd read on great magicians of the past-- but he couldn't say it. Not _Was he your father?_ He had at least some tact. "Go on."   
  
"They wanted what they thought he'd found - which was, more or less, in one form or another, power. I could even tell you it was _ultimate_ power, and not really be exaggerating." He paused for a breath. He'd never had to do this before - never had to tell the story to anyone who didn't know it. The only ones who needed to know were the two who'd taught it to him, his mother and Jintarou. These events - these things - had never been spoken outside of the Kuroba family. And now Kid was telling _Kudo Shinichi_ about the Pandora.   
  
The vertigo which belatedly swept across his vision was, honestly, not unexpected; but the irony of the _Kaitou Kid_ getting vertigo -- and here, on ground level for crying out loud -- was significant nonetheless. Hand across his closed eyes, Kid continued, tone subdued and tense. "That power was - is - hidden. They thought that the original Kaitou Kid had discovered its hiding place. He hadn't, so neither did they.   
  
"That was then. Eight years later, I found the monocle. The Kid's assistants took me to his old room...you would call it a lair, I guess." He shrugged, lifting his head and gaze to again hold Shinichi's.   
  
This next part was hard to put into words - it needed no explanation within the understanding between himself and Kuroba, but they had still struggled to define it simply to have done so. Now Kid was thankful for those past efforts to pin down the tricky moments when Kuroba Kaito had first watched the lights come up on the Kaitou Kid's white suit, hung lovingly in storage under glass; and the tension-breaking moment that twanged through them both - they suddenly knew that there was (had always been?) a both - when he (they) held the monocle for the first time. Though it was still inadequate, the phrase that best suited the necessary explanation was now at his fingertips, and if it necessitated he leave out all the nuance, at least he didn't need to grasp for words in front of Shinichi.   
  
"The first moment behind the monocle... that was when I became."   
  
The phrasing was interesting, to say the least. "'Became,'" Shinichi murmured beneath his breath; it made a certain sense. Potential, splitting off from the original and becoming real. "For you, it's not just putting on a costume and a personality, is it?" _Like twins sharing the same body._ He'd wondered, though he hadn't quite put the thought into words even in his own mind; and really? The concept wasn't any stranger than the rest of the entire business. Kuroba Kaito had seemed to be a different person--   
  
\--for a very good reason. He _was._   
  
Kid smiled sharply. "It's a _uniform_ , Tantei-san, please remember that," he corrected his companion crisply, moving on with the conversation without waiting for a reply. "I am searching for the thing that my father never found, the item of power. If the enthusiastic gentlemen who frequent my heists were to acquire it, the power granted them would put this country, if not this world, in a bit of a bind, extortion-wise." His pleasant smile was clearly very brittle, and he didn't even try to hide it. The consequences he listed now were plastic in comparison to the freshly dredged sludge that bound his heart. His father's smile seemed to strike bells in his mind's ear, long, hollow, heavy tones that thrummed without stop. Sometimes he wished he _could_ muffle them, wrap them all in flannel and hear the true silence of an empty mind when he slept. But he knew that was selfish, and the impulses - idle as they were, for who knew how to muffle a memory? - died swiftly.   
  
"Quite honestly, the bullets don't bother me so much, in that context."   
  
"...I'd guess they wouldn't, would they?" Shinichi had sat through the explanation without moving, chin pillowed on one palm, head tilted a little to the side; his unchildlike gaze had not moved from Kid's face the entire time. "Your father..." He could say the words now. "You must have been, what? Eight, nine?" Cheapening the thought with phrases like _you must miss him_ and _that must've been hard_ was out of the question. "At least you have a chance to do something about it... and they haven't shot you yet."   
  
Kid reached for his drink, sipping it with reserve. Over its rim, he commented, "That's not precisely true, Tantei-san. I'm afraid they're quite decent shots, on the average."   
  
“I… see.” The hospital attendants of weeks past had remarked on several masses of subcutaneous scar-tissue, primarily blunt-force damage of the kind that police officers in active duty incurred from deflected gunshots; and an appalled Shinichi had wondered about them. There’d been one in particular, well-healed but centered directly over the left side of the sternum, heart-high; that **had** to have hurt, no matter what had blunted it.   
  
Bullet-proof vests could only do so much for a target’s torso, and they did _nothing_ against head-shots.   
  
It wasn’t so much that memory as the mental image of a white suit showing the characteristic charring of a close-in bullethole vivid amid red spatters that made Shinichi freeze in place; and it worsened, thought by thought. There was such a thing as knowing crime-scene procedure too thoroughly, and the images that followed _(tape-mark around the body, numbered tags beside bullet-casings, flash of a camera laying every detail out mercilessly clear, shrill ziiip! of a plastic bag closing)_ made his fingernails bite into the arm of his chair.   
  
Worn fabric ripped softly, spilling out upholstery stuffing.   
  
Kid frowned, lowering his cup as Shinichi's agitation increased. "Tantei...?"   
  
_(White glider crumpled and broken, tagged and bagged in an evidence locker; monocle shattered and blackened; reports comparing entrance and exit wounds read aloud in a cold, clinical voice in a cold, clinical room with cold metal drawers)_ Shinichi swallowed hard. "Sometimes I have too good of an imagination," he said thickly, and drained his own glass. "Fair enough. You've told me about your worst audience; so I'll tell you about mine." He sat back, ignoring the damaged chair-arms; they weren't important.   
  
"Mine... I was in the wrong place and the wrong time, and I saw something I shouldn't have." The detective laughed a little, just a small choke of sound; "That's always the way the movies portray these things starting out, right? Only... that experimental pharmaceutical I mentioned earlier? It was supposed to dispose of bodies, not revert them to an earlier state. It was," he shrugged slightly, gripping his glass, "excruciating. Never mind. The point is, I woke up like I am and had to improvise."   
  
Shinichi sighed; the part of him called 'Edogawa Conan' was not separate or anything that could hold up on its own; but more and more, 'Conan' seemed to be the reality and 'Shinichi' the illusion. Who woke up every morning? Conan. Who solved the cases? Conan. Who held Ran's hand when they walked? ....goddamn Edogawa Conan, that was who. 'Kudo Shinichi' was a ghost now, not even as real as a cemetery marker or a photo in a family shrine. 'Kudo Shinichi' was a lie.   
  
And he _**hated**_ that.   
  
"We both have rather fatal cover lives, then," Kid mused quietly, setting his cup aside and tucking his feet beneath him in his chair. "And the fact that yours is constructed where mine is natural doesn't affect how thoroughly dead we can make our companions if we let slip, or if they uncover, our real names. Too bad that we have such vibrantly bullheaded ladies following us around to make the concealment that much more difficult, mm?"   
  
A little more settled now (why was it easier to talk about his own problems?), Shinichi rolled his eyes. “’Fatal’? Do you have any idea what Ran’s going to do to me when she finds out?” he asked. “Not that it matters all that much. In the meantime, I’ve already witnessed the Black Organization—don’t laugh, I didn’t name them—in action several times, cleaning up. Bombs, guns, fire… they like fire; makes everything nice and tidy.” Sarcasm sharpened his voice for a second, raising the pitch into a childishly high range. “So they can’t know I’m still alive; if they find out for certain, I’m dead and so’s everyone who knows me. ‘Fatal’ on a personal level I can handle; that, though, I can’t.”   
  
Across the room, Edogawa Conan’s glasses glinted in the overhead lights; Shinichi looked away. “’Conan’ saves me by existing,” he said quietly. “But someday Ran’s going to find out that he’s as much of a lie as ‘Kudo Shinichi, off somewhere on a deep-cover case’ is, and then the shit’s going to hit the fan. Which is fine, so long as… there’s still a fan for it to hit…” He trailed off with a snort of laughter. “Okay, that came out wrong. But you know what I mean, don’t you? You're in the same boat, in a way.”   
  
"No," Kid countered. "She knows that you wouldn't deceive her if you had the choice. And, someday, she'll know you did it to protect her, whether or not she will agree that she needed protecting. But she..." He frowned, struggling to say Aoko's name out loud. Several long moments later, it still would not come, and Kid continued onward with a wave of his hand to indicate the unspoken woman. "I have no such justification. And, unlike yours, both of my lives are not, mmm..." His smile was fragile. " _'On her side.'_ "   
  
There wasn’t much to say to that, really, but Shinichi tried anyway. “Maybe she’ll still understand, if the situation ever comes up; don't underestimate her. ‘Vibrantly bullheaded’ tends to go along with ‘intelligent’ most’ve the time, doesn’t it?” Restlessly he slid down from his seat and wondered over to the side-table, picking up Conan’s glasses; and he held them up for a moment. Blue eyes met blue, and for once the mask of glass was on Conan’s face only. “The end doesn’t always justify the means, but sometimes it mitigates it,” the detective said, a half-smile attempting to find a way out somewhere. “If it didn’t, there’d be no excuse for childbirth or horrible decade-long anime series, hm?”   
  
"I still don't think those are very justified," Kid laughed, true humor relaxing the tight lines around his eyes and mouth. "There has _got_ to be a more logical way to get that job done, a way with considerably less screaming and epithets, one would hope - and filler arcs ought to be classified as instruments of torture in most cases."   
  
Shinichi shuddered. "That's one mystery I prefer not to learn about first-hand, thanks very much. And as for the other..." He groaned. "ALL three've the kids love Pokémon. And so does my class. And the other classes in my grade, without exception. I was watching it ten years ago, and now I end up watching it again every damn time I go over to Ayumi's or-- and you can just stop smirking right now. The theme song gets _stuck in my head."_ Glare.   
  
Kid grinned, a warm expression that reached all the way into his eyes. "At least you've got it easier than Satoshi; in your case, there's only one of me to catch," he teased, intending the comment to be snarky. But his contentment with the situation, and the peace that had settled warmly around their little enclave of two as the topic had shifted back into safer, less bladed territory, meant that his voice came out on an absolute _purr._ Keeping his own surprise (and maybe a little embarrassment) at what he sounded like off his face, Kid hoped Shinichi didn't ascribe it to anything other than Kid's normal playfulness, while Kaito in the back of his head chuckled lightly.   
  
_Shush, you,_ Kid aimed in his partner's direction. _He's seven._   
  
_"No he's not,"_ Kaito countered, but that was as far as he pressed the issue.   
  
Shinichi chuckled; the easy tone was a far cry from the brittle one of a few moments earlier and, with a twinge of surprise, he realized just how welcome it was: very, actually. He opened his mouth to reply-- and surprised himself with a yawn. "Sorry," he said sheepishly. "The thing about being kid-shaped again is that your body doesn't always obey your mind; the damn drug didn't just shrink me, it literally regressed me. That means I wear out like a kid too, and I need sleep like one as well. It's annoying, but..." He shrugged.   
  
"You'd better get home," Kid conceded, setting aside his cup, unfolding his legs: the little tells of body language that wrap up a conversation even when the conversation itself lingers. "I'll follow you home, if you'd like the extra insurance." Truthfully, Kid planned to follow Shinichi home whether or not the detective wanted a tail or not; but he could at least offer the option of being transparent about it.   
  
The other picked up both cups, carrying them back into the kitchen for a quick rinse and leaving Kid to follow with the mostly-depleted bowl. "I need to stop in at Agasa's for a sec," Shinichi answered absently, kicking the stepstool into place again. "I've-- well, been avoiding him just a little." Over the splash of water he shot Kid a sideways glance, one eyebrow up. "You do realize that he didn't exactly have the option of keeping his eyes closed a few weeks back, right? Don't worry, he's not one to let anything out; if there's one thing the Professor can do, it's keep his mouth shut... I should know. But you do need to be aware that he's not going to be suffering sudden amnesia any time soon." The clean glasses were set onto the counter with a twin _clack!_   
  
_It's all so_ _complicated._ Kid turned away from the counter sharply, the set of his shoulders locked into rigidity. "I wouldn't have expected him to, Tantei-san. If you've got that to deal with, I will be on my way." His heel clicked sharply on the kitchen tiles as he exited the room.   
  
"Whoah, wait! Dammit, WAIT." The chips bowl clattered onto the counter, spun, and made its own exit with a fairly spectacular crash of broken crockery. "Ow! Goddammit--" Reaching in a less-than-graceful grab for the falling dish had resulted in a hand that got at least part of it back; still swearing, Shinichi yanked the chunk of knifelike ceramic out of the back of his hand and attempted to stem the bleeding with his palm. No good; the cut was deep, and he skidded slightly on broken bits of bowl as he hissed in pain. "Son of a bitch-- no, not you! WILL you wait up?"   
  
Kid had stopped just past the doorway when he heard the clatter; he turned and returned one step as Shinichi cursed, and stood watching the petite detective slip, clatter, and otherwise make a klutz of himself in the middle of the kitchen. When most of the motion had come to a rest, one piece of pottery still rocking slightly where it had fallen, and blood dripping slowly from between Shinichi's small fingers, Kid sighed and knelt down. "Come here." He held out his hands to receive Shinichi's own, his expression caught somewhere between irritated, frustrated, and resigned.   
  
Catching hold with his undamaged hand, the small figure swore again. "Shit. Blood all over the place-- sorry." He'd smeared the other's hand as he pulled himself up, his left palm slippery and wet. The cut on his right hand still welled up in a steady stream, and savagely the faux gradeschooler kicked another piece of crockery out of the way. "Look, I did NOT mean I was about to have a huge heart-to-heart talk with Agasa tonight. This late? All I'd planned on doing was ducking in, letting him know I was okay--" (he held up his bleeding hand, far more annoyed than hurt) "--and heading home before Ran calls out the dogs or something. It's waited this long, it can wait a little longer." Blood splashed, red droplets on tile. "Dammit, what'd I do, chop an artery or something?" It looked worse than it was, but the wound was obviously going to need more than a band-aid, and Shinichi tightened his small hand into a fist, trying to stem the flow.   
  
"Don't," Kid said sharply, then his tone gentled as he took Shinichi's hands in one of his own, reaching into his pockets and the waistband of his pants for supplies. Within seconds he had a small medical kit arranged on the tiles and his knees; he tugged the cap off a small flat flask of antiseptic with his teeth, then poured the liquid across both Shinichi's hands and his own, where his thumb held down the detective's fingertips as a reminder not to flinch. That done, Kid set aside the antiseptic and pressed a gauze square to the wound, using the pad of his larger thumb to apply pressure while he opened and unrolled a small spool of adhesive bandage. A few more seconds and Shinichi's hand was fully bandaged, wrapped, and dried; Kid turned both Shinichi's hands over carefully in his own, checking for smaller scrapes and cuts. One on the opposite thumb received a quick application of liquid adhesive to close its minor cut; another spot was daubed with antiseptic cream and a tiny butterfly bandage.   
  
Less than a minute later, Kid sat back from his work, giving Shinichi his hands back for examination. In the silence, Kid began to pack up his implements rather than looking up to meet the other's observation.   
  
_So fucking complicated,_ he cursed silently.   
  
"...thank you," said the detective quietly. It had been strange-- more than strange-- seeing the smallness of his hand in contrast to Kid's. When Ran touched him he more or less blocked it out, or at least as much as he could (internally Shinichi looked anywhere, _anywhere_ but at the memory of the hot spring resort) to keep from dying a thousand deaths of embarrassment; and other than Mouri's little love-taps on the head and Heiji's occasional boosts or lifts during investigations... he didn't really get touched much. The kids just didn't count, though he'd been jumped on and clambered over by all three any number of times.   
  
Ai, of course, never touched anybody very much. She had a problem with that sort of thing, he thought.   
  
Kid's touch had been clinical, rapid and certain with practice doubtlessly gained from having to bandage his own hurts. Hands were the detective's tools and the magician's livelihood; for a thief, they had to be incredibly precious. No wonder Kid had been so careful.   
  
"Kid?" Shinichi watched the other's own hands as they worked, hiding away the stash of supplies as if they'd never been there. "He's not going to tell anyone; I'd stake my life on how well Agasa keeps secrets."   
  
"Shinichi," Kid interjected, warning.   
  
"After all," Shinichi continued carefully, "I have, haven't I? He's... As much as he gets involved with the kids and I, the Professor mostly lives life in a kind of-- I guess you'd say at a distance. He enjoys knowing about things; but he doesn't let them out, not unless you ask. And I've already asked him not to let anything slip, back at the hospital." The boy flexed his hand, testing the pull and give of the bandages; they fit perfectly. "He'll lock everything inside; that's what he does."   
  
_"Shinichi,"_ Kid interrupted finally, his tone sharp. "None of that is my concern. If he were a risk I would have discovered that already. You are welcome to continue being obtuse for as long as you like, but I _really_ want no part of it." _Especially not here, not tonight._   
  
Why didn't Shinichi realize? They had spent the last few hours as friends, insulated, even when they talked about their problems, their "fans," they did it in individual terms, relating their experiences from the time before the convention center. That wasn't threatening - far from it, it was weirdly soothing, if simultaneously nerve-wracking, to be able to confide in Shinichi the things that Kid had never been able to speak aloud before, the things that simply came packaged with the job and the uniform, inescapable things. It was nice to speak as friends would. And within this house, a neutral ground obscurely founded in a clocktower rivalry, Kid had let himself be lulled into thinking that they could be simply friends, without consequence or context.   
  
But by mentioning Agasa, focusing on him, Shinichi was breaking that safety. Kid had to either deny the topic, or turn back to the guarded, private, wary creature that, until this past month, he had always been without respite. The international criminal, 1412, Kaitou Kid... when right now, all he wanted to be was just "Kid."   
  
These frustrations swimming through his head, Kid braced one hand on his knee and prepared to rise, a frown deeply creasing his features.   
  
_"Please."_   
  
That was all; maybe it was the tone, maybe the desperation coming through like water seeping past the seal of a dam. Shinichi'd taken a seat on the step-stool during the bandaging session, and now he crouched there, one leg drawn up out of Kid's way and half blocking his face. "I'm... Kid. This has been--" The boy groped for words, at last dropping his forehead onto his knee. "I am so goddamn tired," he whispered, half-muffled, "of being Conan. Please, just-- don't."   
  
Kid froze again, studying the slump of Shinichi's small shoulders, the grip of his hands across his knee. He pressed his lips together, fighting his immediate impulse, until the impulse itself swelled like a doppler roar.   
  
Before it could recede and fade again, Kid moved, sliding one knee forward on the tile (dark blood smearing on the knee of his black jeans) to balance his abrupt lurch forward. He wrapped both arms around Shinichi - _Conan_ \- and pulled the man (boy) tight against his shoulder, Kid's own face hidden behind Shinichi's shoulder. He said nothing, neither strengthening or loosening his tight hold on the other, just remaining still and immovable. The impulse that had carried him forward wasn't substantial enough to lend him any other inspiration, so Kid just stayed where he was, listening to the only movement between the two of them, their staggered heartbeats.   
  
And Shinichi?   
  
...hadn't a clue, this once, what to do; so he stayed where _he_ was as well, perfectly still in the thief's hold. His plea of a moment before had been completely impromptu and completely real; the other's swift response had shocked and shaken him, but oddly enough there was no impulse to pull away or even move. He was aware, in a way that very few adult human beings ever are once they obtain mature growth, of the vast difference in size between his child's body and Kid's; it should have been alarming.   
  
It wasn't. The embrace wasn't painful, frightening or encroaching. It was merely strange.   
  
"Totally pathetic, aren't I?" he muttered into the thief's shoulder.   
  
"Only if I am," Kid murmured back, eyes pressed shut. Shinichi's hair tickled his cheek and mouth as he shifted, moving his weight off one kneecap, but he only tightened his hold around the boy in his arms. Kid wasn't even sure if it was safe to stay like that, but rather than make that decision, he just stayed put, stealing comfort moment by moment in the strange simultaneous embrace of friend and foe.   
  
This was so going to weird him out sooner or later, Shinichi was sure of it. As Conan, he'd been hugged by Ran, even by Sonoko... _as Conan._ Never as Shinichi, never as himself, ever; the closest had been when his parents had been in Japan, and that hadn't been exactly comforting, had it? Normal teenagers, especially male almost-adult normal teenagers weren't supposed to need comfort.   
  
_I don't care. We already agreed, this isn't anything like a normal situation, so I can deal with being weirded out later on._ "...takes one to know one?"   
  
Kid sat back on his heels, holding Shinchi at arm's length with a hand on each shoulder. "Trust a detective to get it all wrong," he said, mock-scolding his audience. "Wouldn't you rather say that clearly you can't be pathetic, then, if being so would mean that I myself would be as well? Clearly, that's impossible - the Kaitou Kid? Pathetic?" Kid laughed, mischief sparking to life in his eyes, though it had never really been far from them to start. "You are at no risk of pathos, my good tantei, if it's upon my bathos that you depend."   
  
That startled a shaky laugh out of the detective. "Yeah, well..." He straightened up, feeling a little lightheaded. "We're both Big Goddamn Heros. Practically action-figures, complete with secret hideouts and identities and all the rest of it." He studied the thief's expression, feeling his own face mirroring the grin there. Stress-relief, surely; it rose like a bubble from deep inside, unsettling but welcome.   
  
Kid's smile puckered into a rather fetching (and convincing) pout. "I _am_ an action figure, Shinichi. I'm hurt! You're not keeping up with the Taiwanese collectables greymarket?"   
  
"Oh God, please tell me you're kidding."   
  
Kid's expression went stern as he adopted a very cliche, but very impenetrable, You Can Trust Me, Just Sign Here sort of demeanor. "Shinichi, really, I understand being jealous, especially as the production of the figurines required no investment or approval on my part save for arranging the diversion of a small portion of the toys' profits to my own accounts, and as a result are netting me a fairly handsome retainer simply for the sake of being a recognizable news figure. Still, you should work on that quality of pettiness in yourself; surely, the unauthorised greymarket manufacturers will eventually begin turning out Edogawa Conan and Kudo Shinichi action figures too; you just have to have faith that the market will hold." A troublesome gleam lit in the thief's eye, twisting his smile into a smirk. "After all, the Kaitou Kid action figures are currently lacking a villain to go up against, and goodness knows you're more photogenic than Nakamori-keibu..."   
  
The bubble had apparently reached head-level, as Shinichi felt his eyes bug out in outrage. His reply was more of a sputter than words, and it broke up into laughter that-- well, if there was an edge of hysteria there, it was a small one and easily ignored. "You-- are--" (deep breath, gasp) _"--such_ a lunatic." He wiped at his eyes, shifting back on the stool. A bit of pottery rattled against the wood of one leg, and he glanced around ruefully. "Help me clean this mess up, will you? I'll sweep if you'll hold the dustpan."   
  
"I hope the broom is a short one," Kid grinned, pushing his sleeves up in preparation of the work. "And thank you for the compliment; you're _ever_ so sweet to me." Eyelashes batting, Kid ducked out of the range of any swipes Shinichi might want to take at him while he was still at reachable level, then settled down to follow Shinichi's instructions.   
  
The remaining droplets of blood were wiped up, the debris disposed of and the broom ("Why would I want a short broom when a regular one has greater reach?") and dustpan put away. As the step-stool was shoved into a corner by a sock-clad foot, Shinichi sighed and flexed his bandaged hand. "I need to head to Agasa's and at least let him know I cut myself," he said with regret. "Ran'll think he did the bandaging, so--" He hesitated, thinking, and a grin that could only be described as sly made its way out. "Those _Shadow_ magazines... want to see the originals? Tousan's got them in climate-controlled storage downstairs." The offer was real, but the words said more than one thing:   
  
_Neutral ground? For both of us?_ It was simultaneously an apology and an offer of armistice. "This evening's been--" Shinichi blinked. "--a lot of things. But... you'd be welcome. And it's not like anybody's going to look for us here."   
  
Kid smiled, one hand on the doorframe. "Shinichi, you've made the mistake of inviting this cat in to your hearth once. I believe you can surmise how difficult it would be to retrain me...we cats don't like to be obedient."   
  
The detective rolled his eyes. "Woof, woof. Okay, understood; I'll leave the timing up to you. Now, want to see Tousan's _other_ secret tunnel? It's a quick way to the Professor's, but you can take the side-exit before I open the last door if you want." He smirked; he couldn't help it. "I'll save the Bat-Cave for later, though."   
  
The bubble was still there, and it had a name: elation. _Neutral ground._   
  
Kid smiled. "Tempting, but I prefer the altitude of my exits be at least above ground level, if not sea level." He nodded, stepping away from the kitchen doorway, toward the hallway that ran through the library's atrium and past its huge windows. "Good evening, then, Shinichi."   
  
Shinichi hesitated, and then nodded, refusing to give in to the temptation to mother-hen the thief. If _anybody_ didn't need it... "I won't ask if you can find your way out; I know better. Good night, Kid." Ducking his head slightly, he smiled-- not Conan's cute, boyish smile, but Shinichi's, wry and not quite as confident as it had been a year earlier-- and turned away, heading towards Professor Agasa's home and a very brief explanation.   
  
Kid waited till Shinichi's back was turned, then slipped a quick mask on and made his swift way down the hallway to the atrium's windows. Popping one open with the easy touch of fingers long accustomed to blind work, Kid slipped out the window, closed it behind him carefully with a careful grip on the leading of the panes, and secured it there with a tiny wire nail driven into the frame. It would seem locked shut to anyone but himself; now, he had a ready entrance, an open door, into a place where maybe, as Shinichi had implied, something new could take place.   
  
* * * * * 


	7. "Dottle, gas, wild things"

_**Chapter Seven**_ _ **: "dottle, gas, wild things"**_  
  
  
Professor Agasa had been dismayed enough over Shinichi's bandaged hand that questions regarding other issues had been set aside; he'd supplied Shinichi with a container of regenerative ointment, admonishing him to put it to good use. Which, the young detective thought rather guiltily as he'd agreed to do so, was certainly going to happen as soon as he was able to send some along to Kid-- maybe with one of his doves? Or something.   
  
The walk back had been quiet, or as quiet as a city's streets ever got. Ran had chewed him out slightly for being late, but once again his bandages had let him off the hook. _God, I'm going to owe a lot to karma when I get back to normal._  
  
And now he lay on his futon with Mouri snoring a few feet away... and he couldn't sleep. Couldn't read or anything (Ran'd see the light through the crack under the door), couldn't turn on his laptop (for all his noise, Mouri was a fairly light sleeper), couldn't do anything but lie there and stare at the ceiling. Maybe he could count sheep? But the sheep kept turning into hang-gliders, and the fence they were soaring over looked a lot like the second-floor railing in the Kudo library; Shinichi muffled his groan in his pillow, which was much too thin and could do with replacing.  
  
There were a lot of things he probably needed to think about, but right now all he could do was wonder if APTX 4869 could possibly have brain-damaging properties that had somehow slipped Agasa and Ai's research. There was nothing sane about making friends with a known felon, and when the heists started back up, what the hell were they going to do then? Because there was no way in hell that he-- Conan-he, Shinichi-he, whatever-- was going to go easy on Kid; he _couldn't._ And somehow he didn't think Kid'd want that, anyway; wasn't there some saying about how a man was known by the quality of his enemies? Not a good word, 'enemies'; it didn't really fit.  
  
So much to consider... and then there was the case of the dottle in the night.  
  
Weird word, 'dottle', the chunk of half-burned tobacco knocked out from a pipe prior to reloading; weirder still, finding three of them at the foot of the Mouri residence's stairs, one still smouldering faintly. Shinichi'd smelled them before he'd seen them, and he knew that scent: the Momoyama blend that Nakamori favored. The brand was common enough, but the Inspector's particular blend had a larger share of latikia than most and it was, well... 'penetrating' was appropriate; so was 'burning styrofoam'.  
  
So what had brought Nakamori Ginzo to Mouri Kogoro's doorstep only to have him pause, smoke for a good long while, and never go in before moving along? _A three-pipe problem,_ thought Shinichi sarcastically. _Not. He was casing the place out, maybe waiting for me? The question's not 'why' but 'why hasn't he interrogated the crap out've me already?' It's not like I haven't been expecting him to._  
  
He turned over restlessly, wadding up the too-thin pillow and wondering what on earth he could in all conscience say. 'I didn't see anything'? Of course he'd seen everything and the Inspector had to know that. 'I'm not going to tell you'? So much for his cred with the cops. 'I don't know what you're talking about'? Not. Likely. And _then_ Nakamori'd start in with the  other questions: _Who are you? Why are you masquerading as a child? How did you get that way? Who are you trying to protect? What, exactly, do you think you're trying to accomplish?_  
  
And he'd sit mute. And Ran'd pitch a fit, and then they'd try to contact Conan's 'parents' and it'd all just go to Hell in a handbasket. This time the groan was not as muffled; Mouri shifted on the bed, snarling something about Mahjong into _his_ pillow as Shinichi bit his lip.  
  
 _Most guys my age, my real age-- they don't have worries like this. They're just freaking out over the next chem test and doing their best to get laid._  
  
The pillow was worse than useless; picking it up in one hand, he allowed it to dangle above him like a narrow white marshmallow before dropping it squarely over his face. The cottony, too-soft mass was obscurely comforting, and he allowed it to remain there while he tried to think.   
  
The-- hug? hold? embrace? --whatever-it'd-been earlier, that had startled Shinichi. No, it had shocked him, as much from his own reaction as anything: black depression dispelled (or at least lightened) by a rush of relief so strong it'd almost been tangible. Why? What was it that he'd wanted/needed so very badly that being unexpectedly seized like that would make him feel _(admit it, Kudo, man up and admit it)_ so much **better?** Not just touch; that was there too, yeah, but...  
  
Beneath the pillow Shinichi's eyelids tightened as he went over the handful of moments in his mind: the broken bowl, Kid's careful fingers on his own, the warning about Agasa, Kid's reaction, his own involuntary response. Kid's reply.  
  
 _Contact. Connection. It's not just the fact that I asked and he answered back, it's the connection implied. I reached out, he reached back. And he didn't have to, any more than I was required to ask._ Beneath the pillow Shinichi's eyes flipped open wide. _It's the simplest, first impulse we have as infants, reaching for and receiving-- it's what we need to survive.  
  
It's what I needed. Me, Shinichi, not Conan. And I got it._  
  
He was still mulling this over when his eyes at last lidded closed of their own volition and he slept.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Kuroba Kaito grinned. "You ready for this, aibou?"  
  
 _Always,_ Kaitou Kid responded. In Kaito's head, the statement accompanied the fiddling motions of Kid perfecting his uniform. His hands shaped and straightened the knot of his tie; the smooth heels of his white patent loafers clicked softly together, his posture militarily perfect and poised. He settled the monocle into place - usually, it was the first piece to be put on, but today the last - and turned to face Kaito.  
  
In his mind's eye, the magician examined the thief. Not a thread was out of place - though the same could not be said for his unruly hair, just as wild as Kaito's own. "You look perfect."  
  
 _Good,_ Kid smiled, walking forward to bring himself to a level with Kaito. The thief faced outward; the magician looked inward, toward the depths of their shared mind's eye. Kid laid one white-gloved hand on Kaito's shoulder briefly, looking forward; Kaito, too, looked straight ahead of himself, but the pair didn't need to look _at_ each other to know each other. Kid squeezed Kaito's shoulder; then the magician stepped forward and the thief did too. The distance of two paces spread between their shoulderblades, each retreating from the other. And the wire snapped, its ends recoiling in elastic unpredictability as Kid brought his leading foot down hard on the floor of their mind, coiling his legs beneath himself, and dove.  
  
* * *  
  
From the outside, it seemed that Kaitou Kid simply appeared in midair. In truth, he did, but not without an origin point. Kuroba Kaito's black, form-fitting garments - turtleneck, pants, shoes, stocking cap - fluttered harmlessly to the rooftop where the magician had stood. Already twenty feet below that point, the Kaitou Kid reveled in his free-fall, arms spread wide, bright cape snapping taut in the roaring wind. He laughed like a madman set loose, because in fact he was; he laughed like a child on its birthday, because he might as well have been.  
  
Exactly seventy-eight days after the convention center disaster (because, as anyone could easily surmise, seventy-eight worked out to three 1412's), Kaitou Kid dove unflinchingly off the north side of Beika's third-highest skyscraper, heading straight for the glass atrium ceiling of one of the biggest jewel houses in the city. As the floodlights of the Task Force belatedly caught up with him, following his descent for its last few seconds before his inevitable impact, he cackled with laughter in pure, unadulterated delight. The news cameras followed him, a streamlined white dart wearing a top hat, as he neared the atrium's skylights. Closer - far too close to use the glider - closer - closer -  
  
And then, as the cameramen, Task Force, and world onlookers winced in fear of the impact, an explosion of confetti completely obscured the Kid from sight. Large paper discs in all sorts of bright carnival colors bloomed up in a gusting, blizzard-like swirl that seemed to rise out of the very glass beneath Kid, and the helicopters' cameras frantically zoomed out from their tight focus on the thief, trying to encompass the size of the cloud. The confetti fell quickly, too heavy to stay airborne even in such a gust of wind as Kid had produced, and littered the glass and tile of the building's roof.   
  
Through the gaps of skylight still visible past the settled confetti, the gleam of light reflected from a well-cut gemstone reflected against the cameras' lenses, further obscuring the room below. A few moments later, as the breeze from the copters' rotors swept confetti free of the rooftop, the window was cleared. On the gallery floor of the atrium, a white silhouette framed by the searchlights of the copters against the rest of the dimly lit display room, Kaitou Kid leaned back, tipping his hat brim back so he could peer up into the lights and noise of the Task Force and news media three stories above him. A sapphire the size of a goose egg looked perfectly at home nestled in his hands.  
  
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN," Kid shouted, grinning for the cameras he couldn't see past the helicopters' searchlights, "Please accept my apologies that tonight's heist has not been as theatrically exquisite--" (a pause and a wink, irony in his expression that he trusted the cameras to catch) "--as you may have hoped! After so long a time away, I must make up for lost time."  
  
From the extent of the room around him came the slam and crash of doors being quickly opened, security gates being rolled up. Shouts and the beams of gun-mounted flashlights filled the room, adding visual and aural static. Unflustered, Kid glanced to his right and left, grinned up at the camera, and saluted. "Good evening, then."  
  
And with another burst of confetti, this time accompanied by his trademark pink smoke, Kid disappeared.  
  
"BLEEP!ing BLEEP-BLEEP!er!" roared Nakamori, shoving his way through the doorway (or at least that's how his regrettably clear comments were aired on the news shortly afterwards.) "Half of you head to the roof! GET THAT BLEEP!ER BEFORE HE BLEEP!ING GETS AWAY!!"  
  
Of the recordings that were later collected for police archives from the security cameras, one in particular was notable to those few researchers years later who had access to them. It showed a small figure that darted through the crowd of bodies, indistinguishable in the staccato light/dark of the room except for an upraised arm and the flash of a watchband. The diminutive shape vanished back into the stampede of bodies, also heading into the hall (although not to the roof, apparently, if later video was to be believed) and all that was left behind was a scatter of squadmembers, a great deal of chaos, and Nakamori Ginzo...  
  
...who, staring at the open roof, bared his teeth in what could only be an enormous grin for no more than a second. _**"Knew**_ you'd be back," he said happily into the relative silence; just that and only that before the rising wails of sirens cut him off, and he thundered out of the room with his men behind him.  
  
In the stillness of the gallery atrium, a discarded police flashlight rolled to a slow stop. Its beam scythed across the tiles in a yellow crescent, coming to rest on an unremarkable patch of floor tile...  
  
...but at the very extent of its light, where the sharp lines of illumination faded into a vague incandescent glow, it revealed to the empty room the toes of a brightly polished pair of white patent loafers, just peeking out from beneath the edge of a heavy cloak.  
  
Kaitou Kid, wrapped snugly in a thick black cape (top hat held beneath the cloak in one arm, sapphire bundled into protective cloths and tucked within the hat), shifted his toes back under the edge of the fabric, hiding their white shine, and resisted the urge to grin like a Cheshire. "Missed you too, keibu," he murmured. Then, swiftly, he headed toward the eastern exit of the gallery, which led into a smaller exhibit hall. About half the height of the large gallery, the exhibit hall's ceilings were only about twelve feet high; its southern corner was equipped with a fire staircase.  
  
"What kept you?"  
  
The cheerful voice (accompanied by a _thwip!_ of something tiny and sharp flying through the air and snagging in the thick material of the cloak) came from the left. The exhibit hall was extremely dark, but there was just enough light to show an equally Cheshire Cattish grin and the faint shine of lens.  
  
"An indulgence of sentimentality," Kid responded, ducking to the right and drawing his card gun. He kept a bead on the reflection off of Shinichi's glasses, sliding the gun's barrel deck as he did to bring a specific card to shooting position. He cocked the gun and nearly missed the _thwip_ of a second dart being fired -- the detective had hidden the sound of his own fire within the clack of Kid's weapon. With a proud smile, Kid dropped low to avoid the dart, aiming at Conan on a level - which meant that if the boy ducked, the card would actually miss, as opposed to a card shot from the higher angle of a standing adult. That sort of shot, if ducked from, would simply end up hitting the target's back or shoulders, and on a body as young as Conan's, that kind of impact - even with a blunted card - might do significant damage. And Kid wasn't here to take trophy shots.  
  
He fired. The flare of flint sparks lit his face in a split second of werelight, shadows thrown in all directions, and then the room was dark again, save for a split second's worth of shiny, blunted metal - the edges of his card - flashing in the night.  
  
There was a thud, a crunch and the sound of swearing; if the comments following the crunch had been recorded for public consumption, they would have included a great many bleeps. Conan had just managed to land on his glasses. "Do you know," he said in distinctly aggrieved tones, "what Agasa's going to say when I tell him I broke my glasses again?" There were scrambling noises and the thin crackle and whine of a miniscule motor starting up. Blue sparks danced at ground level, threads of lightning grounding themselves excitedly as the detective rose to a crouch.  
  
"Oooh, fancy," Kid cooed from somewhere to Conan's left. Abruptly he was visible - very visible - as he shed the heavy, confining black cloak and leaped, rising high into the air. The whirr of a high tension cable revealed the trick - a grappling attachment for the card gun. A clack and doubled thud announced his arrival on the ceiling; flipping upside down, with his feet braced against the plaster ceiling into which his hook was lodged, Kid comfortably hung nine feet above Conan's head and launched a small rain of smoke capsules toward his target. From the midst of them, a large silk cloth, dimly visible in the low light of the room, exploded into view. It spread flat, catching air like a sail, carried down toward Conan by fishing weights tied in its corners. It was big enough to hamper, if not completely cover, Conan, but more importantly, it obscured Kid from the detective's view for a few precious seconds.  
  
The silk fell true enough, but Conan's kick was already moving and projectile met foot with a peculiar combination of a hard crack! and a rattle; suddenly there were bits of light rising through the smoke and beyond the silk, heading high and fast to strike anything in their path--  
  
Ice, chunks of it everywhere, small and cold and light but certainly enough to sting and bounce off even a moving body; a plastic pitcher clattered and spun back down to the floor. There was water, too, though no more than a spray; had Kid been on the floor he would have found himself dancing on a slippery surface that would have slowed movement to a more manageable level. As it was, the ice was no more than a distraction.  
  
Of course, that worked from both directions... "Catch!" said Conan, as one small arm flailed from beneath the silk in an overhand loft, and the shadows were suddenly illuminated by a tiny burst of brilliance: a strobe, small and short-lived, but extremely bright.  
  
Kid muffled a shout as the light flared. As it died, he weighed his options: shroud himself in his cloak and hope the soon-to-arrive dart missed, or blindly shoot a second grappling hook and keep moving until his vision came back. He opted to stay put, popping the glider open and angling it so that it shielded his body entirely. "For Benten's sake! You really are just an imitator, chibi-tantei!"  
  
The expletive he received from beneath the thrashing black silk had, despite what he had just said, a certain originality to it. Conan's head popped out as the fading light skittered across the ice-littered floor. "Critic, imitator, make up your mind, will you?" The cross-hairs lined up; blue eyes that for once lacked their usual mask of glass narrowed as the detective gauged his shot-- and took it.  
  
 _Thwiiiiip! PING!-_ thuk!  
  
He'd missed... almost. In the uncertain, failing light it was impossible to see where the dart that had just ricocheted off Kid's glider-strut had actually landed; and Conan held his breath for one still moment, staring upwards.  
  
"I know what I'll call you," Kid's voice came, deliberate and irritated. The glider collapsed and the thief rotated in place, playing out grappling wire so he could hang upright, one arm flexed tight to hold his weight. A silvery line of light - the dart, reflecting light from below - twinkled between two of his gloved fingers; with disdain Kid dropped it to the floor along with a quantity of small pink pellets. "A crap shot."  
  
The pellets hit, exploding as they did. The sour-sweet scent of sleeping gas identified the plumes of pink smoke that quickly filled the room. Adding overkill to thoroughness, Kid dropped another handful of pellets, then tossed another toward the other side of the room, where they bounced off walls and floor, exploding wherever they hit. The room was completely filled with a dense bank of heavy pink smoke as Kid began moving back toward the atrium gallery by way of the ceiling and his grappling ropes.  
  
Not that Conan saw any of this... As the pink fog stole consciousness away and blanketed his brain with a numbing darkness much heavier than the black silk, the last thing that filtered through his mind was: _Dammit, I have GOT to work on my aim..._  
  
*  
  
On the roof, inside one of the funny faucet-shaped ventilation ducts that belched white steam from the boilers, Kaitou Kid curled up as small and tight as he could manage, tucking his feet well out of visible range. He was shaking all over, muscles spasming from the effort he exerted to force them to keep moving when they wanted to shut down. The Kid uniform was stashed safely in a different location on the roof, an RFID tag tucked in with it to let Jintarou find it quickly. A similar tag, set to a very, very private identification, was tucked into his own pocket. And pressed tight against his heart, wrapped to his body with elastic bandages, the cold, heavy weight of the evening's heist sapphire was a distant comfort.  
  
As his eyes finally shuddered shut, teeth chattering with the futile effort to fight the effects of Shinichi's sleeping dart, the last thing that filtered through his mind was: _Benten damn it. 'Crap shot' my ass...this one's a draw, tantei._  
  
*  
  
Two days later, after sending a certain chatroom message (to be delivered upon login; the internet had been silent), Shinichi sat in his particular corner of the Beika City Public Library's observation deck once again, back braced against stuccoed brick, feet propped up once more on the rim of a planter; waiting.  
  
 _Face it, Kudo, he might not show. But what else was I supposed to do--?_  
  
He'd awakened to Nakamori and his men pounding like stampeding water-buffalo across the serengeti... or at least that's what it had felt like to his aching head. Every other time he'd gotten a lungful of Kid's damned pink gas it had been minor, but this time, oh no. Not this time. He'd breathed in enough of the sophoric that his ears rang and his vision kept slipping sideways when he'd attempted to sit up; and if that hadn't been annoying enough, there'd been the nausea and the unfortunate results of downing a glass of water that a well-meaning Squadmember had found for him...  
  
 _\--I couldn't just... go easy on him. That's not how it works. Come to think of it, he didn't exactly go easy on me, did he?_  
  
Nakamori-keibu'd come down on him like the Wrath Of God, apparently forgetting-- or not believing-- that he was talking to a child. He'd chewed Conan out as thoroughly as one of his own Taskforce members for going off on his own; he'd managed to keep the epithets to a minimum, but beyond that hadn't held back much. Which, when you thought about it, was simultaneously intriguing and worrying as all hell.  
  
 _...wonder if I hit him?_  
  
And oh, Ran had been angry. No, scratch that, she had been livid; what little hide Nakamori hadn't scoured off had been neatly fileted as soon as he was brought home; Agasa (who'd actually been waiting back in a squadcar during the entire heist) had also gotten served, and the only reason Conan had been allowed out of the Mouris' at all had been Ran's schoolwork.  
  
She'd even marched him up to the library checkout desks and gotten the clerks there to agree not to allow him past the doors. How humiliating.  
  
 _...wonder if he's still pissed off?_  
  
Conan-- Shinichi-- sighed, tilting his head back against the wall and closing his eyes. Not the greatest night for him, no; except-- Except that, somewhere down in the pit of his stomach there was lurking a little spark of satisfaction and _(admit it, Kudo)_ glee. Kid might have gotten away with the goods, but at least he'd had to work for it.  
  
 _Heh._  
  
"Did you come here by yourself, little boy?" Shinichi's attention was pulled from his reverie by the light tones of a pretty young woman standing beside him. Her long dark hair was pulled into a bun at her nape; her black pencil skirt looked professional enough, but her pale blouse's neckline bared both the back of her neck, much like an apprentice geisha's might, as well as...other...oh dear. He was Not Looking. Not Looking At All. He beamed up at her, his charm turned on 110%, hoping his slight blush could be attributed to childish ruddiness in the fresh air of the observation deck.  
  
"Ran-neechan is doing work downstairs," Conan answered brightly, "So I'm being quiet and not distracting her."  
  
"Oh, alright!" The lady looked pleased at that. She crouched down to be level with him, which had the thankful side effect of removing her, ahm, assets, from Shinichi's direct line of sight, and patted him on the shoulder lightly with a vapid, eyes-closed smile. "You're such a good little _bozu_ , nobody would ever guess what kind of trouble you get into at night!"  
  
 _....what?_ Shinichi could actually feel his ears practically catch fire; with the very specific kind of guilt that teenage males are prone towards in the presence of attractive females, he backpedaled frantically in memory. Wait, what'd Ran TELL the librarians? I didn't-- I don't-- I haven't even hit PUBERTY again yet, dammit-- "...gahh?" She really was quite pretty, artistically made up and long-lashed, with eyes of a particularly striking hazel. "I, uh, I'm... just reading," he said lamely, holding up the book he'd been using as a prop; "See?"   
  
" _Where The Wild Things Are,_ " she read with amusement lilting her voice. There was just enough room on the bench beside Conan for the pretty lady to squeeze in beside him, and she did so, thin-fingered hands reaching back to smooth the seat of her skirt as she delicately took her seat. Looking over his shoulder, her near arm and the side of her - Conan gulped - ahm, self, just barely brushed his shoulder as she idly turned a page. In the book's characteristic soft colors and deeply detailed linework, Max surveyed the sea from the coast of the Wild Things' lands. "And are you an adventurer like Max, out at midnight on a wild rumpus of daring and danger? Does Ran-neechan keep your supper warm for you until you return?"  
  
Not this last time she hadn't; it'd been a hastily-reheated cheeseburger and Mouri's leftover fries. And not that he'd felt like eating them much, either. Ran'd shown a few signs of remorse after little Conan's all-too-visible nausea had expressed itself again, but-- well. "When I behave, she does," he answered with what he hoped was just the right hint of regretful sincerity as he tried to edge a little away. The woman, however, leaned an arm against the wall, scooting closer; and the boy blinked at the faint, fragrant wave of her perfume. It held notes of magnolia and apricot, light and delicate and as lethal as a jackhammer to the cranium.   
  
_...help?_  
  
  
He cast around wildly for something to say. "And um, uhh-- Max is a dork. Running around in a wolf suit, like he... was really a..." She _really_ smelled good. Conan swallowed hard, and behind the mask of his body Shinichi curled up into a ball and whimpered.  
  
"And he really wasn't a wolf at all, was he?" The lady's smile was soft and fond, her fingertips drumming lightly on Conan's shoulder. If all her advances so far hadn't been enough to tip the scales, this certainly was now: she was _waaaaay_ too close for justification. "He was just a little _white sheep_ in wolf's clothing. Just in dis~guise, mm?"   
  
_**DING!**_  
  
  
"You. Are a TOTAL bastard. Do you want to get arrested for pedophilia?" muttered _Shinichi_ sotto voce, the penny dropping at last. He kicked the nylon-clad leg beside his rather viciously behind the cover of the planter's trailing fronds. A good deal of the force behind the kick came from a heavy dose of self-annoyance; he  really should've known, but that goddamn perfume had been like a brick to the, errr, brain. Definitely the brain. Nowhere else.  
  
So he kicked 'her' again, hard, just for good measure.  
  
"Ah! Ow! Ah le le le, Conan-kun, no need to be violent!" Kid winced away from his diminuitive rival, rubbing his now tender shin with a pretty mou of frustration on his lusciously-painted face. "Really, if anything, you should be mad at _yourself_ for forcing me to such lengths! I gave you an easy tell even before you brought up the book." Crossing one ankle demurely over the other, hands folded appropriately in his own lap, and now with a sociable distance between the two of them on the bench (Conan skittering away from Kid once he caught on had helped open up some space), Kid smiled delightedly at his small companion, eyes closed in a beatific 'Isn't he so cute' sort of expression.   
  
Now that Shinichi knew it was a disguise, he could appraise the woman in front of him with a different sort of attention. Kid's hair - a careful wig - was as perfectly coiffed as his makeup was expertly painted; his pearl earrings and necklace pleasantly matched the off-cream of his blouse -- though, Shinichi mused, that meant that Kid's ears were pierced? Something to keep in mind. Kid's nylons hadn't ripped from the kicks he had delivered, but he still had time to fix that. And the heels Kid wore - black strappy stilettos with a sharply pointed toe and a tiny silver buckle on the outside edge - just screamed "brand name." Shinichi looked to Kid's necklace and earrings again, wondering if he could determine whether they were fake from this distance -- and ran up against the real puzzler of the whole costume, which was Kid's, ahm - oh, _hell_.  
  
"Will you read your book to me, Conan-kun?" Acting completely oblivious to Shinichi's increasingly bad mood, Kid smarmed through his smile, confident in the fact that, now that Shinichi knew who he was and had shaken off the perfume's, ah, _spell_ , he was limited in his responses to only those that wouldn't draw onlooker attention.  
  
Kid grinned even more sunnily. He freaking _loved_ this game.  
  
Shinichi considered another kick. It'd be childish, of course... but then again, why resist when for once (twice, in his case) you could get away with being childish? He drew back his foot slightly, aimed at just above the very nice shoes-- and paused, laughter bubbling up inside of him.   
  
There was a better way to handle this.  
  
"Sure, Neechan!" Practically glowing with cavity-inducing rays of saccharine cuteness, Conan very deliberately _leeeeaaaned_ against the pretty young woman and her assets, thus bridging the gap between them. Comfortably settled in, head pillowed (and grinning internally), he began to 'read' aloud.  
  
 _"'The night Kid wore his white suit and made mischief of one kind and another..."_ he began, _"...the Police Inspector called him GODDAMN KID YOU BASTARD, WHO WEARS WHITE TO PULL A ROBBERY ANYWAY? and Kid said "I'LL STEAL YOUR JEWELS SEE IF I DON'T, BWAHAHAHAH", and Kid was sent to bed without stealing anything.'"_ His childish voice was pitched conversationally low; you'd need a shotgun-microphone to actually catch the words unless, of course, you were the one being read to.  
  
Conan shifted, deliberately snuggling closer. This was, he thought to himself, the weirdest game of Chicken he'd ever played in his **life.** _"'That very night in Kid's secret lair a heist-plan grew and grew and grew until Beika City was ass-deep in traps and trained attack-doves were perched on the walls all around...'"_ Rolling his eyes up deliberately to the face above him, the 'little boy' smirked. "How do you like the story so far, Neechan?" he asked innocently.  
  
"Very fascinating!" Kid smiled down at him, careful to keep his amusement silent and off his face. This game was was so much more fun when Shinichi actually thought he was gaining ground. In truth, the Kaitou Kid was completely bombproof when it came to physical intimacy. _Snuggle all you want, tantei, the only reaction you'll get out of me is a smile._ The same couldn't be said, though, of Shinichi's reaction to being coddled...Kid knew that one quite well already, and planned to make ideal use of the knowledge.  
  
Petting Conan's hair in the most patronizing, cloying way he knew how, Kid reached over the boy's shoulder and turned the page for him, the (warm) swell of his disguise pressing gently against Conan's shoulder and ear as he did so. It gave to pressure as convincingly as if it were real, and Kid would bet that Conan might even be able to hear Kid's heartbeat resonating through the, ah, tissue.  
  
 _Of course, they'd_ _better_ _be as good as real, I paid enough for the blasted lovely things._  
  
Conan fought back a desire to squirm; he was not going to flinch, he was NOT going to flinch, he was not going to-- Subduing an internal growl at the hair-stroking, he read on. _"'And a police precinct waited with a private cell for Kid, and he flew on past it through nights and nights and almost for over a year to Beika City, where the wild detectives are.'"_ He snuck another look; 'Neechan' was beaming down at him, and if 'she' pressed any closer she was going to lose a button on that blouse; Conan could see it straining.  
  
He cleared his throat. _"'When he came to the place where the wild detectives are--'_ Kid, you're about to pop right out, do something about it, _'they yelled their terrible insults and waved their terrible handcuffs and smoked their terrible pipes and, uh-- Till Kid yelled "MINE!" and swiped the fricking gems anyway with the magic trick of dosing them with damned pink sleeping gas that makes detectives barf all over their damned SHOES.....'"_ That button was really about to go, anytime now. "Want me to finish it, Neechan?Or do you prefer getting escorted out've the library for indecent exposure?" Another sugar-sweet smile up at 'Neechan's' face, anywhere but at that button.  
  
"Oh, would you look at that." Kid had the decency - or indecency, depending on how you looked at it - to sound surprised. "Hold on a moment," he murmured, reaching with both hands to rearrange his blouse so the button in question wouldn't strain. To do this, he worked right around Conan's head, tugging the fabric of his blouse into position. This had the side effect of, ahm, _fluffing_ his assets within their bra cups (the lace of which was a distinctly tactile pattern pressing through the fabric of his blouse). The soft whisper of fabric, the brushing touch of skin (Kid's wrists) against skin (Conan's ears and cheeks), the liquid pressure of Conan's pillows shifting position - it was all a very sensory process, one which Kid undertook with, to all exterior appearances, completely dry and matter-of-fact practicality.  
  
On Conan's end of the experience, however...  
  
The thing with the chemical cocktail that had given him his current stature was this: what the brain had experienced was still there, even if the vehicle which contained that brain was, ahhh, incapable of... well. A seven-year-old body was just that, no way around it. And just then, the teenager living inside the gradeschooler's head was wishing for a mental cold shower, a rainfall, anything... and counting his blessings about the aforementioned seven-year-old body, etc., etc. Because Kudo Shinichi, brilliant as he was, was also a teenager coming up on adulthood and a healthy one at that.  
  
 _Icewater... snow... scrubbing the toilet..._ He went down the mental catalogue that most teenage boys keep ready for times of need. _...freezing rain... wet boxers... Megure-keibu dancing naked, AAGH..._ That last one had pretty much done the trick; not that he'd _reacted,_ precisely, but at least now Shinichi didn't feel as if his Conan-self was about to short out something crucial.  
  
Damn. Kid was going to pay for this somehow, though. He'd figure a way.  
  
With steady hands, Conan turned another page and read on: _"'And so Kid led the wild detectives on a chase until at last one day they all ganged up on him and beat him to death with his own hang-glider. And then his carcass was stuffed and mounted and put on display in the Beika City Home For Indigent Crimefighters for all to see. THE END.'"_ He sat up straight with a certain amount of childish dignity and put the book to one side, beaming up at 'Neechan.' "Did you like the story? I thought the ending was _**perfect,**_ _"_ he said cheerfully, propping his head on his linked hands.  
  
 _I feel like a moose,_ Kid pouted.  
  
 _"Imagine how the meece feel,"_ Kaito laughed.  
  
 _It's meese with an_ _S_ _,_ Kid corrected him snippily.  
  
To Shinichi, Kid gave an enthusiastic grin, bracing his hands on his knees and leaning forward in shared 'excitement.' "I think it ended too quickly! I would have liked to hear more about the chase. And also the stuffing process. I don't know how to stuff a person, do you?"  
  
The unintended mental image that flitted through Kid's mind in response to that phrase very nearly startled an external reaction out of him, but he kept himself - and his features - under control just barely. _Where did THAT come from? Since when do I turn "stuffing" into a sexual innuendo? Ugh. My perfume is probably getting to_ _me_ _._  
  
"No, but I'm sure Nakamori'd be just _thrilled_ to experiment," answered Shinichi in a low voice, allowing Cute Widdle Conan to slide to one side. The very few other rooftop patrons had by now vacated, either driven off by the pair's saccharine performance or simply by the weather, which looked like it was about to shape itself into a drizzle; they had the place to themselves, and Shinichi opened his mouth to say something completely and totally scathing--  
  
\--just as Kid's traitorous button began to slip free yet again. Automatically the detective's hand came up and he pointed, drew breath to speak, sputtered... and began to snicker instead, free hand slapping over his mouth in an attempt to muffle what had been building the whole time.  
  
"Hmm? Oh." Kid reached down again, tucking deft fingertips into the neckline of his blouse. A quick tug and tuck on each side, and then he sat up straight again -- and suddenly, there was a whole lot less asset staring Shinichi in the face, and the button wasn't forced to fight for its leverage. Kid beamed innocently at Shinichi, beginning to snicker himself. "It's all in the lift, really."  
  
"You," managed Shinichi through his snickers, "are-- a-- SADIST. How the hell--?" An experimental finger very nearly poked at one of 'Neechan's' most prominent bits, but pulled back at the last second. "Never mind, don't want to know." Glasses off, Shinichi wiped at his eyes, still trying to get his breathing under control. "Where do you buy things like that? And don't tell me the Hong Kong Black Market, I won't believe it this time." He scrabbled his free hand through his hair, feeling better than he had in days.  
  
Kid looked affronted. " _Buy?_ My dear tantei, I assure you, I have had no implants. These are all natural."   
  
"Of course they are. And they fold for easy storage when you're in your suit, I'm assuming." One eyebrow up, Shinichi gave the other his best Look. He was enjoying himself immensely, all the trauma of his earlier brooding completely forgotten.  
  
"No, actually. They look quite impressive, it's true, but they bind down quite nicely. Would you like me to show you?" Kid's thin fingers went to the buttons of his blouse, beginning to ply the uppermost one free, as one eyebrow gracefully hiked toward his hairline.  
  
 _Urk._ "I'll pass," said Shinichi as dryly as possible. _Note To Self: Do Not Tempt Thief To Do Outrageous Things, Because He Will. And Then All That's Left Will Be Writing The Apology Note And Committing Hara-Kiri. End Of Note._ "Public place, bad idea, Ran'd walk through the door and catch you flashing me, you'd escape, I'd end up in therapy, all that." Another snicker escaped before he attempted to sober down a little, though it wasn't easy; that bubble again, rising up and forcing the laughter to the surface... "I take it there's no hard feelings about the other night--?" he asked.  
  
"Hard feelings...?" Kid laughed, a sharp, unexpectedly loud sound, as he rebuttoned his blouse, brushing both (perfectly manicured) hands smoothly around the curves of his bust on the pretense of smoothing out the fabric. "Darling chibitantei, that was the most fun I've had in a _very_ long time! I only used the sleeping gas as an absolute last resort - had I my choice, we could have continued playing for quite some time longer." _Don't need to mention that it was your regrettably close aim that cut our play short, though, do I? Otherwise you might start thinking you can get somewhere with me and those darts, and I can't have that, no matter how fond I am of you, Shinichi._  
  
"Good." Enormous relief; a weight falling away, a prickle of pain easing like a muscle unknotting somewhere in the region of his spine. "Because," and Shinichi cracked his knuckles where they were laced behind his head as an enormous grin spread across his face, "I," and he brought his hands over and up, cracking them a second time, "had a BLAST. Even if I did puke in Nakamori's squadcar." It hadn't been funny at the time, but afterwards...  
  
Kid _beamed_. "Even better! It's like a birthday present. ...Next time, perhaps, I'll go a little lighter on the sleeping gas?" Something possibly akin to sheepishness - but not actually - crossed his pretty face. "I suppose thirty caplets was a bit overdoing it, even in a room that size."  
  
The detective hitched a shoulder up, dismissing the matter. "No big deal, three darts, thirty caplets." He snorted. "And I _did_ catch you showing your paws... Did you know, the fog was thick enough that it kicked on the smoke detectors and set off the sprinkler system? Seriously; by the time the Squad found me the place was soaking wet. That silk thing you dropped actually kept the worst off, but Nakamori and the rest--" Both hands mimed running figures, then sliding figures, and then falling figures. "SPLAT!"  
  
"I'm starting to realize why he hates me so much," Kid trilled happily, all but radiating sparkles and palpable glee. "But in seriousness, perhaps I should be less vindictive next time. It's only amusing now because you didn't catch pneumonia, and none of the Inspector's men broke any hips."  
  
"Point. Though I think 'hate' doesn't really fit," said Shinichi thoughtfully, tucking one foot up beneath himself and steepling his fingers. He peered at Kid past them; the nature of Nakamori's attitude towards his quarry had been something he'd considered a time or two over the past few weeks. "You're more like his own personal Everest, if you blanketed the whole mountain with hallucinogenic fog and gave it a sense of humor. You're also," and Shinichi arched one eyebrow, "job security. Do you recall what his field of specialty was before you started showing up 'again'?"  
  
Innocent blink, one hand held delicately up to his breast, which swelled as he drew an excessive gasp. "He _had_ a job before me?" Kid asked with falsetto surprise. A snicker as he deflated again, leaning back with one elbow propped up on the back of the bench, recrossing his legs less demurely, one knee over the other. "No, no, I'm not serious. But, your point? How is it job security to constantly fail at your task? One might worry about him _losing_ his job unless he shows signs of catching me."  
  
"Not likely." A thin shoulder hitched in a shrug. "If you were a reporter and wanted to do an article about famous robberies, who would you want to interview? Or say you wanted to run a seminar on security technology, or write a book on media phenomena? Or criminal profiling, or-- I think you see what I mean. The big game hunters don't make the history books for their kills, they make them for what they stalked." Shinichi chuckled softly, thinking of what he'd seen the previous night. "Do you have any idea what his work calendar looks like? He's booked from here to next August to speak at the Nakan police academy, the new one at Fuchu, even at a conference for the LAPD in Los Angeles in March--" In mid-sentence, Shinichi froze, mouth open. "--ahh-- not that I'd have access to his personal database or anything. Exactly." He had the grace to look embarrassed.  
  
Kid raised one eyebrow. "Not that I'd prefer to be called one of keibu's prospective _kills,_ or anything." (Kaito snickered in the back of his head. _"Meese!"_ ) Kid waved one hand, dismissing Shinichi's snooping and Kaito's laughter both. "It's good to know he'll be doing some traveling. I'll have to pay more attention to his calendar, make sure that I don't schedule anything inconveniently. It's so much better to hold these things the nights _before_ intercontinental full day flights, rather than the night after he's departed. But it would be even worse if I spaced them out somewhat so he had time to rest between the heist and his flight. Then, Benten forbid, he might actually get a good night's sleep!" Flutteringly, Kid held one hand to his perfectly-painted mouth, opening it in a very lusciously convincing O of surprise.   
  
The act contrasted nicely with the rest of his posture, which gave a very thoroughly leonine impression of relaxation and confidence, despite the fact that, in his rather delicate and fiddly women's garments, Kid refrained from truly sprawling across his half of the bench. Still, he flexed one leg, tightly muscled calf stretching his nylons as it tightened and released again; then, pointing his (beautifully shod) toes, Kid rolled his ankle with a small crackle and dropped his innocent femme act for a few moments in favor of simply stretching out. "Mmm. You would not believe how much more sensitive I am, in comparison to most women, to the calf cramps and shin splints you get from high heels. Most people don't notice the beginnings of trauma and muscle strain, just the resulting pain, because they don't have to be as intricately aware of their bodies as I do. ...The ones who choose to be as aware as I am are usually labeled tantrics."  
  
"Tantrics," pointed out the detective, "are generally depicted as either Buddhist holy men or sex-maddened cultists, depending on which movies you watch. Neither one exactly fits." He watched the thief stretch thoughtfully, following the line of calf and ankle as they flexed beneath the sheen of hose.. and then blinked, feeling his ears abruptly heat; for a second there, he'd been a teenager admiring a pretty woman's legs. The notion made his brain hurt; not that they weren't (Kid's) nice legs, and not that he didn't _like_ nice (Kid's) legs, but... He shot the thought dead in its tracks before it could do him any more injury, because--  
  
They really were nice legs.  
  
 _ **Nnnngh!**_  
  
"......" Shinichi cast about a little desperately for an island of safety. "Nakamori, though-- back before your, ah, earlier incarnation, he did the usual beat-cop things and then went into Fraud and Organized Crime; during the eight years between, he did a lot of looking into some tricky areas... a little this, a little of that..." He shrugged, looking out across the library's lawn far below; a few droplets of rain flickered through the space beyond the railing, not even as much as an actual drizzle but more of a hint. "Would you believe that the man can actually write? Some of his reports make for interesting reading. Some of them," and Shinichi glanced sideways at Kid, "you might want to pay attention to. Especially the ones from eight years ago."  
  
Kid's brows drew down, his gaze narrowing and focusing sharply on his diminutive conversant. "That sounds fascinating," he responded, his tone dry as bones. _Thank you for the tip, Shinichi. I_ _will_ _be looking into this, and immediately._  
  
Kid had opened his mouth to speak further when a rattle from the stairwell door alerted them both that they were no longer alone on the observation deck. The librarian who came out onto the deck clicked sharply as she walked first to the level's far side, circling around to visually check the entire area. When she came around the corner and into view of the pair on the bench, she stopped some distance away, professionalism warring with confusion on her face.  
  
"Can I help you?" Kid asked sweetly, standing and brushing off his black pencil skirt.  
  
The slim librarian self-consciously touched one hand to her own conservatively-cut blouse (cream) and fingered the edge of her skirt (black, knee-length pencil cut) with the other, one foot (low black pumps) braced half a step behind the other. Confusion seemed to be winning. She frowned, opened her mouth briefly, closed it again. Touched her pearl necklace, furrowed her brow beneath wispy brown bangs that had shaken free of the bun she wore at the nape of her neck, and shook off her confusion. Clearing her throat briefly, she smiled at Conan, the much less confusing target of the pair.  
  
"Dear, we'll be closing this observation deck in preparation for the storm; they say it's going to rain pretty hard. Will you come with me downstairs to the reading area? We have soft couches and _Shonen Jump_ magazine."  
  
Kid smiled at Shinichi, his role firmly in place as a mask across his features. He tucked a stray wisp of brown hair (which must have fallen free of his bun) behind his ear and addressed the librarian. "Thank you so much for coming up to let us know. I think we're the last two up here right now." Then, to Conan, with quite a more patronizing tone than the librarian had used, Kid offered one hand. "Let's go find Ran-neesan, Conan-kun, and let her know that we finished reading your book, okay?"  
  
 _You have_ _got_ _to be kidding me. Pun intended._ "Okay," said Cute Little Conan-kun, docilely hooking his fingers in 'Neechan's' and rising to his feet, books under one arm. "Neechan, your button's coming undone again." He pointed. "Look, I can see your bra," he said with a note of innocent surprise.  
  
The librarian, docile and modest soul that she was, meeped. Kid's eyes flew open wide, shock at Shinichi's daring overtaking his act for a split second. Then a forced blush rose to his well-made-up cheeks, and one hand fluttered up to cover his troublesome button (which, contrary to Conan's 'surprise,' was not actually slipping). "I'll have to fix it in the ladies' room," Kid answered without a stumble, continuing to lead Conan toward the stairs confidently. "Keigo-san, isn't it? Thank you for fetching us. Come on, Conan-kun."  
  
Inside the stairwell leading down from the observation deck, Conan fought to keep a triumphant grin off his face. He'd caught that wide-eyed moment; and while he had no illusions (hah) about just who was the magician here, it was rather satisfying to be able to trick the trickster... even if it was only for a second.  
  
Not that he was going to gloat about it. _Too_ much. Visibly, at least.  
  
Glancing at the thief, he raised an eyebrow. "Are you actually planning on escorting me all the way to Ran?" he asked, low-voiced as he trotted beside Kid, two steps to the other's one; above them Keigo-san was just closing the door. A curl of rain-scented breeze whipped in just before it clicked, cooler than the stairwell's rather stuffy air.  
  
Kid just smiled, his expression whimsical. _Wait and see!_  
  
Shinichi sensed doom in that look. _Hmm. Maybe I should just gloat while I have the chance... no._ "Fine. Lead on." He squared his narrow shoulders, determined not to flinch. Why did so many of their meetings turn into some variety of a Staring Contest?  
  
* * *  
  
Ran was Not Impressed. Ran was so many flavors of Not Impressed that Kid was pretty sure he could _feel_ them like very angry fire ants on his skin.  
  
 _Oh, for all Luck's sake. Now I know why Tantei is so damn determined to keep this woman happy._  
  
His mind flashed briefly back to the picnic heist in the park, and in the background, Kaito shuddered.  
  
 _"Benten preserve me if she and Aoko hit it off."  
  
Benten hold us both,_ Kid laughed grimly.  
  
Externally, though, his smile was warm and unwavering. "You must be Ran-san," Kid gushed at Ran, apparently oblivious to the steely glare currently staring 'her' down. In the background, Keigo-san (whose self-preservation circuits were clearly working better than Kid's ever managed to) skirted their little trio with plenty of space to spare, skittering away from her more brazen doppelganger in favor of the nice, safe, predictable Returns desk.  
  
Ran eyed Kid up and down, taking in the whole outfit. The air conditioning in the library lobby was on rather strong, and it was somewhat nippy, especially as the outside air had cooled off in readiness for the storm. Ran noted this, too, and honestly wished she hadn't. _How much does a decent one cost, anyway? That's just indecent._ Self-consciously, Ran brought her arms up across her chest - which had the added bonus of adding to her displeased posture.  
  
" _Mouri_ Ran," she clarified tersely.  
  
"Ah! Mouri-san, so nice to meet you. Conan-kun and I were talking up on the observation deck, and he mentioned you warmly. Are you siblings?"  
  
"We're very close," said Ran, smiling. Or showing her teeth, at any rate. "Aren't we, Conan-kun?" She reached out and hooked her own hand in Conan's, tugging him away quite firmly. "And now I'm going to take him home. Thanks so much for looking after him, um... I'm so sorry, I didn't get your name." The young woman's eyes narrowed slightly. "Surely you don't work here, do you? You don't look the librarian type--?" The implied 'whoever you are' floated in the air like a banner. Beside Ran with his fingertips beginning to whiten in her grip, Conan closed his eyes briefly.  
  
Kid beamed at her unflinchingly. "I'm new, I'm in filing. Manee-san, but my friends call me Maneki-chan as a joke. Pleased to meet you." Kid bowed. Probably a slight bit lower than necessary, but the angle let him provide such a wide, smooth curve of, ahm, _skin,_ toward Conan's eye-level, that it was really hard to resist.  
  
With a small smile, Kid straightened, nodded, and departed, heading toward the card catalog computer bank with purpose. A few moments later, when he turned back to see that Ran was still studying him with suspicion, he smiled, raised one hand, and waved in a beckoning up-and-down motion, then blithely went back to his work.  
  
Watching 'Maneki-chan' walk away, Conan, with his eyes half crossed from the view he had just been given (fake or not, they'd been _very_ realistic) slowly looked up at Ran... who stared down at him with flushed cheeks and a distinctly accusatory expression, one that said _MEN ARE ALL ALIKE_ in heavy print, possibly with an underline and italics. Without another word she turned them both around and marched them out the door, not even bothering to put the umbrella up until they'd both gotten slightly wet from the rain that was now beginning to fall in earnest.  
  
"--how many times have I warned you about talking to strangers?!? Especially ones like--"  
  
Hunched shoulders. "Sorry, Ran-neechan."  
  
"--NEVER just go off and trust somebody without thinking! I'm surprised at you! Conan, if I--"  
  
Woebegone look. "I didn't mean to make you mad, Ran-neechan, really."  
  
"--women like that, you just never know. You're smarter than that, Conan-kun. What do they teach you in--"  
  
Contrite head-hanging. "Didn't mean to."  
  
It lasted until just before the stairs. As they began to ascend, Ran's cross expression faded slightly and she looked down at her charge's crestfallen face. "I suppose she just seemed like a pretty woman to you," she said irritably. "You always seem to understand motives and personalities so well, I forget sometimes that you're just a kid and that you wouldn't recognize a, a--" She paused, and behind Conan's face Shinichi raised an eyebrow.  
  
"A what, Ran-neechan?" He just **had** to hear it. _C'mon, Ran, say it, this's actually pretty entertaining..._  
  
She flushed again. "A cheap little--"  
  
The door at the top of the stairway opened. "Who's cheap? What?" asked Mouri, staring down at the two with bemusement in his eyes and stubble on his chin; the Great Sleeping Detective had apparently been sleeping. "Dinner?"  
  
Ran sighed, rubbing at her eyes with one hand as she snapped the rain off her umbrella. _"Yes,_ Tousan, dinner." She trudged up the stairs; and Conan, feeling just a little ashamed of himself, trudged up behind her.  
  
* * * * *  



	8. "Lunatic, question, pharmacist"

_**Chapter Eight: "lunatic, question, pharmacist"**  
Soundtrack:  [Meet Me At My Window, by Jack's Mannequin](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV6A4mZ5L7M)_  
  
  
The email that pinged into 1nb!u's inbox was very terse.  
  
 _Will. Get. You. For. This._  
  
Kid grinned like a lunatic. _mt me @ our window in 34 min. hv a q 4 u._  
  
 _"You're crazy, you know that? You're crazy."_ Kaito was pacing back and forth across the breadth of their shared mind's eye, treading holes in their theoretical floorboards. _"LU-NA-TIC. Ky-o-u-ki!"_  
  
Kid whistled as he puttered around his lair, rearranging things and gathering up old mugs and glassware left over from late night planning and research sessions. "Kyouki. In English, _'lunacy,'_ noun; root _lunatic_ , adjective. From the Old French _lunatique_ , insane; and Latin _lunaticus_ , 'moon-struck.' Meaning, 'affected with periodic insanity, dependent on the changes of the moon;' or literally, "moon-sick." First recorded usage of 'lunacy' dates from the thirteenth century, though the American president Teddy Roosevelt first came up with the catchphrase _'lunatic fringe'._ " He paused. "Honestly, I can't think of a more accurate label for myself, in any language."  
  
Kaito groaned. _"It is not my fault when this kicks you in the teeth, Thief."_  
  
Kid smiled. "I won't blame you, Magician."  
  
The ping of his chat window punctuated that promise.  
  
*  
  
Ran had sent him to bed. At times like this, Shinichi very nearly hoped that he _wouldn't_ return to his former self, because if and when he did his keepers would have a wealth of humiliating/incriminating/painful reminisces to inflict on him on command. Granted, he had a few of his own; not as many, though, and not nearly as embarrassing.   
  
_At least I've got the room to myself._ Mouri was enthusiastically cheering on an All-Yoko-All-Night marathon in the living room and Ran was in the middle of a low-voiced phone conversation with Sonoko in her room; something to do with the weekend, he thought. And so Shinichi sat cross-legged on his futon once again, initiating a conversation with a wanted felon.  
  
 _Sorry Kaasan, Tousan; I've fallen into bad company. I can feel my morals corrupting like crazy, but I can still catch the murderers so it all kind of balances out, right? Right. Very logical._ Kid's mention of a 'question' earlier had been burning a metaphorical hole in his virtual pockets for several hours; he brought the laptop up, logged in and opened a chatwindow.  
  
 _Next time you pull a disguise like that I'm going to scream FIRE and start beating your wig with a library book_ was Dductshn's polite greeting. _I think Ran believes I'm a budding pervert._  
  
Kid laughed, typing quickly. _shes just jealous u dont look @ her lke tht, & by "lke tht" i f course mean w jaw @ knees_  
  
  
 _Very funny. From my level it's kind of hard to see people's faces if they're female and well enough endowed. Their heads look so SMALL. Cannot wait til I either get back to normal or a growth spurt one or the other._  
  
 _bc then ull b able 2 apprciate my hrs f hard work w mkeup adhesiv & enough csmetics 2 nearly gve me acne_, 1nb!u typed, _whch wll someday gratify me w th rewrd of u trippn ovr ur fancy shoelces whn i show up 2 a smmr heist in a bikini_  
  
This... did not result in mental images conducive to anything like sanity. Blocking them out hurriedly, Shinichi replied with: _It's probably already on 4chan._  
  
Kid paused a moment, savoring a smug and toothy grin while both he and Shinichi absorbed those collective mental images, and added: _ill wait hre whle u go find tissue 4 ur nosebleed_  
  
Quick subject-change time. _Lalala not listening lalala.........you said something about a question?_  
  
Kid's expression sobered. _yeah,_ he typed, more slowly than his norm, _wanted to ask you about her, actually. i'm not going to pretend either of us still needs to be tripped up in niceties, so, bluntly: are you in love with her?_  
  
  
*  
  
Of all the things he'd expected to be asked, that hadn't been one of them; and now Shinichi stared at the keyboard of his laptop in silence, fingers still, and wondered what to say.  
  
There was the kneejerk response, two of them actually: the embarrassed teenager's _She's just an annoying girl I've always known_ or the deeper, harder _I care about her, I have for longer than I knew._ And then there was the cold hard reality of _It doesn't matter, does it? Not while I'm like this._ The last was a cop-out and Shinichi knew it; but this once, this once, there  wasn't only one truth.  
  
So he answered the only way he could, and never even thought to ask why Kid had the right to ask the question. _I was, and I can't, and I don't know what to do about it. I don't know what'll happen in the future, so I'm not holding onto that-- or her-- as a lifeline; I can't and I won't, it's not fair to either of us. Best answer: Am I in love with her? I -have- been. Am. Beyond that? There aren't enough clues in the world to tell me what'll happen now or next or in a year. Simple question, complicated answer. Don't expect an easy yes/no to something like that._  
  
Pause.  
  
 _What about Nakamori's daughter? Same question back to you... with a given value of 'you' in this case. Fair question._  
  
Shinichi sat back, feeling oddly shaky; not even Heiji'd gotten an answer like that from him, just an annoyed scowl and something that in the shorthand of teenaged boys said not-gonna-elaborate and left it at that. He'd... yes. In total honesty, he did care about Ran. He knew that, had known it, had acted on it, had hoped for the future, had wanted-- Facts were facts, truths were truths.  
  
But 'still'?  
  
He had. Did. Loved Ran. Wanted to; it was comfortable/uncomfortable, a safe shape for his feelings to wear. That didn't mean that the shape was right or real or possible or the only one they'd ever wrap themselves in... and where the hell had that come from, anyway?  
  
*  
  
On the other end of the internet connection, Kid frowned. That hadn't been the response he'd been expecting at all, and not a pleasant one, at that. It was altogether too _messy_ , complicated and unclear. What happened to 'only one truth'? He'd had his response - and the angle of the conversation - all planned out already, though he hadn't gone as far as to type it out in readiness. Now he had to re-evaluate the conversation. He had expected Aoko to come up - planned on it, actually, and intended to use discussion of her as leverage to get Shinichi to do what he'd wanted.  
  
 _This was supposed to be a way to clear away our obstacles,_ Kid fumed, _not a way to raise more!_  
  
It all worked out neatly in his head. This was to be expected - everything _always_ worked out nicely in Kid's head. It was one of the perks of being a savant just off the side of sanity. The problem right now was, Shinichi wasn't following the game plan. He was _supposed_ to have answered 'yes' - or some obfuscation of 'yes' that could be rather briskly boiled down to its component confessions - at which point Kid would have presented him with a very simple challenge: to tell Ran. Whether that was 'only' that he loved her, or the whole nine yards of secrets, Kid would have left up to Shinichi; but he would have formed this challenge with the promise of a "matching donation," as it were: that Kaito would inform Aoko of just as much as Shinichi informed Ran. A tit-for-tat in coming clean.  
  
The purpose? When the dust settled, Kid had envisioned, the two of them would be free of the regrets, half truths, and evasions that currently bound them. They would be free - with their ladies' support, ideally, but if not they could still soldier on - to take on in earnest the task that stood like a massive white elephant before them, or more appropriately, an albatross laced round both their necks. The Black Organization needed to go down. No ifs, ands, buts, or compromises about it. Kaitou Kid played for keeps no matter what scale the game, and the little problem of "against overwhelming odds" didn't even come into concern. With their core secrets revealed to each other, and further secondary and tertiary secrets being swapped on a near-daily basis now, to Kid's mind, an actual alliance between Beika's best detective and Beika's best thief/infiltrator/aggressor was the only conclusion possible.  
  
But it wasn't possible with Ran and Aoko in the way. They needed to be cleared to the sides, to either be supports or be cut loose. Rather than fearing and regretting his feelings for her, Shinichi ought to be able to draw strength and inspiration from his devotion to Ran, and by doing so become a more formidable - and less hindered - opponent, both to the Kid himself and to the shadow network that opposed them. With Kaito's concern for keeping the Kid secret from Aoko cleared away, Kid himself would more brazenly be able to draw the Black Organization's fire, and in doing so, discover more crucial information about them that might, ultimately, lead to the revelation of its weaknesses.  
  
All that stood in the way of all of this was Shinichi's missing 'yes.'  
  
As he brooded at his computer screen, Kid became slowly aware of a mental static off to the side of his head, a toe tapping sharply and with irritation on the 'floor' of the mental space he shared with Kuroba Kaito. As soon as he turned his attention to his partner, the other's frustrated irritation came into sharp and sudden focus.  
  
"And when were you going to ask me about this?" Kaito asked testily.  
  
Kid frowned. "It's necessary! You know that the burn scars are going to raise suspicion as soon as the weather warms up and we start wearing our gakuran open at the collar. And you _do_ care about her, and you know she does back! Your situation isn't even as testy as Shinichi's is."  
  
"It's still _my_ situation," Kaito responded, quiet but firm.  
  
"She deserves to know as much as Mouri-san deserves to know about Shinichi."  
  
Kaito shook his head, running both hands through his hair in frustration. "It's not yours to decide. And Mouri-san would be finding out that the man she loves is still okay and nearby her, however much he's lied to her in the process of staying near. Aoko? Would discover that the man who's always been near to her and whom she cares about has been lying to her for years, for his own personal gain, with actual detriment to herself and her father."  
  
"Detriment?" Kid scoffed. "Shinichi was explaining--"  
  
" _Aoko_ is not an economic or political genius like Kudo-san seems to be," Kaito interrupted. "And what she _feels_ about the situation, not what logic tells her, is often her only truth."  
  
Kid sighed, dismissing that concern with a wave of his hand. "Well, this is all a moot point anyway. Shinichi's being stupid about the whole situation, and I'm just going to have to figure out a different workaround to get this off the ground."  
  
Kaito's eyes narrowed. " _Kid,_ don't get so deep into your big project ideas that you lose sight of the real world."  
  
"They killed our father," Kid snapped, temper flaring. "How can you dismiss that as a 'big project'?"  
  
"Because you're not thinking about Tousan," Kaito countered. "You're thinking about Edogawa-kun."  
  
" _Shinichi,_ " Kid corrected him testily.  
  
Kaito smiled. "I'm sorry. _Kudo-san._ " He laid heavy emphasis on the honorific - and by implication, on Kid's lack of honorific.  
  
Kid frowned, hearing the implication and unsure how to respond. Kaito faded into the background of their mind, leaving Kid alone again, faced by the blinking cursor of his chat window.  
  
Kid checked the clock. No more than two minutes had gone by while Kaito and he had their prolonged internal argument; on the other end of the screen, Shinichi was probably not worried about the lag, at least, not much.  
  
 _Honesty for honesty, then,_ Kid resolved, squaring his shoulders.  
  
Hell, this was complicated.  
  
*  
  
The text of Kid's response appeared on Shinichi's screen slowly. The thief was clearly sacrificing his normally quick typing speed for deliberation and, Shinichi could only guess, careful thought.  
  
 _Kaito cares for her deeply, and she for him. He holds her at arm's length for fear of hurting her when she discovers me, as she someday inevitably will.  
  
My interests lie elsewhere._  
  
  
The detective read the response, blinked, and read it again. _And I thought_ _my_ _life was complicated... Well yeah, it IS, but in a different flavor._ Frowning, he began to type his reply, small fingers moving quietly across the keys.  
  
 _So, 'we're totally screwed' pretty much sums it up at the moment, doesn't it? Ran deserves the chance to decide whether or not she wants to wait for me, even if she doesn't really know the truth as to why I'm 'gone'. It's the main reason I haven't told her, you know-- it'd trap her, she'd feel obligated to wait and hope and I'd never know how much was obligation and how much was real. Sooner or later she's going to figure it out, she's not an idiot. Matter of fact, I know at least three people who I can honestly say have probably caught on but haven't said anything about it yet. Heh... Schroedinger and I share a mailing address. Schroedinger's P.O. box._  
  
Shinichi hit the return key, wincing at his own pun even as he considered Kid's last comments. 'Elsewhere'... That was intriguing.  
  
 _but isn't it unfair to not let her know how long she'll be waiting if she chooses that?_ Confused, Kid frowned at his screen, momentarily forgetting that Shinichi couldn't see. _you can wait a short time easily and keep waiting lots of short times in a row if you think that it's going to end soon. if she knew that it would be a long time, she would decide differently?  
  
besides if she wants to wait that's her business. it's not your job to insult her by thinking she doesn't know how to separate what she really wants from everything else._  
  
On the other side of the screen, Shinichi shifted uncomfortably; that was hitting a little too close to home regarding a few thoughts he had at his most depressed moments. _Point. I'm not denying any of that-- it's not fair no matter how I try to justify it. And_ (he paused mid-sentence, biting his lip and remembering what Ai had murmured to him on the way home from school the day before the heist) _I may have an opportunity to resolve it and come clean sooner than I thought. We haven't talked about her, but I think you know about Haibara Ai, don't you? Know about her as in the similarities between her and I._  
  
Kid's eyebrows went exploring somewhere near his hairline.  
  
 _pharmacist?_ He didn't feel comfortable typing more - not even on an anonymous handle on an anonymous chat program. But he knew that would be enough for Shinichi to understand.  
  
 _You could say that. Her former employers were reluctant to release her from their employ; she had to apply some rather extreme strategies to get free, since their, ah, closure package wasn't to her taste._ Shinichi smiled grimly to himself, remembering Ai's precise young voice tersely reciting the chemical name for the apotoxin one Autumn afternoon. They'd been walking home from school; she'd taken a certain delight in terrifying him, and considering the situation that she'd lived in he supposed he could understand that. Ai was rather severely maladjusted socially and emotionally; her entire life's focus had been on her work and her sister, and she'd been betrayed by the one and lost the other to death, so this was hardly a surprise. As much as her clinical detachment irritated Shinichi, he-- what? Admired her? Understood her? Liked her? A little of all of those, but not a lot of any; the answer was as complicated as the person it referred to.  
  
Anyway, back to the chatwindow-- _She has something in mind, a possibility that needs exploring. And lab rats are only good for so much before you need to start on clinical trials. Since we don't really want a rehash of Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde, I guess you can see where this is going. Even Haibara has no conviction of any effects lasting beyond a few hours or possibly as much as a day, but--_  
  
  
Shinichi paused, staring at what he'd just typed. There it was on the screen, big as life and twice as real: his future as a guinea pig.  
  
 _If it works, I'll talk to Ran. I can't say how much I'll tell her, not yet, but -I will talk to her.- Because you're right. Damn you, Kid. Why can't you ask the easy questions?_ He scrabbled one hand through his hair, falling from his crosslegged seat back onto the futon and rolling over to lay flat on his face, facing resolutely away from the laptop and the choice he had just made.  
  
 _I'm often told that I'm an insufferable bastard, in more or less flowery terms,_ Kid responded wryly. _and for what it's worth, i'm glad she'll get a bit more ground to stand on. she deserves it.  
  
so does n's eldest, but as i've been reminded, that one's not actually my territory. i can help him best by staying away from her; i can help yours best by kicking your ass. so, consider yourself kicked for her sake, and i suppose your own.  
  
besides. if you can concentrate better and if you have her love, you'll be even stronger. and i do love a good fight._  
  
No need to tell Shinichi everything that he was planning, not quite yet. The man was going to have a big enough challenge simply surviving the "pharmacist's" trials. And past that, well, Kid figured he could do a little work with doves, the odd magic trick, to help his...well, his friend. At this point, that word really did apply best, though it wasn't the _only_ word that applied best - there were several, most of them contradicting each other.  
  
The full moon would arrive in only two days; at that time, along with checking his stolen goose-egg sapphire in its full light for hints of Pandora, Kid intended to hold himself up for examination, too. It was ironic, but Kid felt more like _he_ was the Pandora of myth, run straight over, around, and through by the incautious charge of a hundred loosed emotions charging free of the puzzlebox in his hands. His incurable need to poke, prod, and otherwise _mess_ with things had doomed him to solve the puzzlebox that was Shinichi Kudo from the moment he'd first met him. When Kid discovered, after a year of leaving the Shinichi puzzle half-finished on his mental shelf, that his toy had been hiding within Edogawa Conan the whole time, the thief's need to solve both puzzles became a demanding itch at the back of his brain, a trinket game he played with whenever more serious matters weren't actively demanding his attention.  
  
One puzzle naturally leads to another, especially in Shinichi's situation. As Kid discovered through the process of investigating the bipartite detective, his situation was very much akin to the mythic Gordian knot, or perhaps something squirmy with tentacles. And so now Kid found himself in his current situation, surrounded by half-finished puzzles, all of them interlinked. Making progress on one of them might have the counter-effect of backpedaling the next; or two might get deadlocked together, dependent on a third to be scooted aside so that progress could resume. It was a delicate game, one which Kid had played with impunity up to this point, mainly because - as at the crux of his argument with Kaito - the puzzles he played with didn't represent _his_ problems. Shinichi's woman, Kaito's woman. What might happen if he prodded Conan's kiddie companions with some new magic tricks? Or how far could he taunt Nakamori through non-heist means before he finally caved to Aoko's begging for a new purse? He wasn't personally tangled up in any of the puzzles, until now.  
  
Now, Kid had - somehow - acquired a friend. A real, honest-to-god friend, cold pizza dinners and late night chats and playing ridiculous games of Chicken and "movie nights in," except with them it was aged Western novels and hot coffee, and for holy Benten's sake, _instant messaging_.  
  
The Kaitou Kid -- this Kaitou Kid, that is -- had never had a friend. His father had, once; there was a vague memory, somewhere in the back of Kid's and Kaito's collective memories, that their father, the original Kaitou Kid, had been best friends with a mystery writer. But for this one, friendship was a new and overwhelming experience, so different from the anonymous adoration of a hundred thousand screaming fans.  
  
And perhaps, just perhaps, it was getting to his head more potently than the fainting, fluttering masses ever had.  
  
 _Complicated, it's all so complicated,_ he mused. Kid sat back from the keys with a tired satisfaction, hands hanging loose at his sides as he leaned back to balance his chair on its back legs. He would wait until the results of Shinichi's conversation with Mouri-san were clear. Then...  
  
Then, Kid would have some hard thinking of his own to do, as well. To the rest of the world, the public faces of Edogawa Conan, grade school detective; Kuroba Kaito, high school magician; and Kaitou Kid, international felon, hadn't changed much in the last year: they all had their roles to play, and played them well. But the private paradigms of the Kaitou Kid's world had revolved completely in the last two months, as had Shinichi's - if in comparably less drastic ways than the detective had yet realized. If Kid was going to force Shinichi to hold his life up to the light, searching for singular truth, then Kid owed the detective the same gesture in fairness.  
  
Even though he was certain he wouldn't like what he found.  
  
* * *  
Shinichi lay on his side with his head pillowed on his arms, watching as Kid's text scrolled across the screen, just a little too far away to type but close enough to read. Thoughts ran around in his head, chasing each other like dogs and squirrels... like cops and robbers... like detectives and phantom thieves. It was, he considered with a twinge of tired satisfaction, just another facet of how weird his life had become when the best advice seemed to come from someone who'd begun as an opponent and who'd managed to metamorphasize into a friend. It was a tribute to both their natures that neither had changed so much in their selves as in their regard.  
  
So: first Ai's experiment, and then (assuming he survived it) he and Ran would have a Talk, the one he'd been simultaneously dreading and anticipating for so long. And then?  
  
 _We'll see. For once I'm not dreading the future; for once it doesn't look all that bad, no matter what happens. And I couldn't've said that a few months ago, couldn't've even believed it.  
  
Pretty damn good magic trick you've worked there, Kid._ He half-smiled, twisting around on the futon to type.  
  
 _A fair fight, huh? Oh, you just -wait.- It'll be all that and then some. Hey-- coffee again Wednesday? Think Ran'll've forgiven me by then._  
  
 _thn ill just have 2 get u in trouble again,_ Kid laughed. _do u prefer a D or DD cup?_  
  
* * * * *  
  
  
  



	9. "Experiment, trespassers, pink"

  
_In which Kid and Shinichi both try out new roles, tell each other new things, and discover one new pasta dish that's never been tried before! Kind of._  
  
*  
  
"Left arm. Make a fist, please." A needle gleamed like a silver stiletto, thin and bright. "Two more vials, Professor."  
  
"Blink once; one more time. Now, stare straight ahead at the mark." Pupils contracted and dilated at the flash of a penlight.  
  
"Reflexes are good... hm; you've grown two centimeters. Normal for your apparent age, I suppose. When did we take these last measurements--? Ah, never mind, here it is. Right arm this time, please." Figures were jotted down in a notebook,  _Height: 124cm. Weight: 18.73kgm. Blood pressure..."_  Haibara Ai paused, a faint frown on her angular face. "You're slightly hypertensive; not a surprise for an adult, but rather abnormal for a seven-year-old male. Not that anything about this is normal, of course."  
  
"No, really?" said Kudo Shinichi, peeling back the velcro on the BP cuff. His tone was dry enough to spontaneously ignite all on its own. "How much more do you need? I'm running out of things for you to measure." Across the small exam room (little more than a glorified storage area to one side of Agasa's lab, pressed into use by Ai and kept carefully locked) Professor Agasa carefully measured out Shinichi's blood into twelve different tubes, each one labeled in his surprisingly neat script.  
  
Ai's tone was clinical, remote. "Just general samples. If we're going to move ahead with the experiment we have to establish a current baseline; and I wouldn't complain," she added with the flick of a gaze before gathering up a few items from the exam room sink. "It's your health we're considering, isn't it? You should be flattered. Moving right along... Fill this, please."  
  
Shinichi looked at the two-liter bottle that Ai held in her hand. "...you have got to be kidding me."  
  
"What?" Irritated, she frowned at him, then down at the plastic container. "Oh. Not this,  _this."_  A more reasonably-sized beaker sat on the counter between them, indicated by a wave from a small plastic glove.  _"This_  is going into the trash." She moved past him , oblivious to Shinichi's sigh of relief and the Professor's convulsive snort of laughter.  
  
When Haibara Ai had quietly informed her fellow unfortunate of the results of her current line of inquiry, his initial reaction had been along the lines of  _Jesus Christ, Not Again._  How many times had it been, the agonizing journey there and back, from Conan to Shinichi, from a forced childhood to an artificial adulthood? Three so far, and each time he'd been dragged back, like a rubber-band snapping into shape after being plucked over and over again.  _Oh God no. It hurts and it never lasts._  To be fair, Ai'd done it once herself, so she knew. But to see the cool enthusiasm in her eyes and hear how she'd said that he'd need a week away this time, mostly preparation and recovery--  
  
It was a funny thing; but Ayumi was the only one whom she ever really relaxed with, as little as that was. Perhaps she missed her sister, finding her likeness in child's open smile. You never knew with Haibara Ai.  
  
Coming out of the bathroom, Shinichi passed over the small beaker to the Professor and flopped down onto a chair in the larger lab area. He glanced up at the large man questioningly as Ai typed away at the main computer console, thin fingers flying across the keyboard. "You said I'll.... wait, I'll need a  _week_  for this? Why? What's so different about this time? Before--"  
  
Agasa labeled the flask and placed it neatly in the small under-the-counter fridge used strictly (thank God) for labratory samples. He cleared his throat. "'Before', Shinichi, never worked. If we're right, this won't be permanent either; but it will be safer, and you'll return with less lingering ill effects." He shrugged one large shoulder, running a hand through his grey curls. "We never allowed for the damage the accelerated growth did to your cells each time you reverted in the past. Remember?" He regarded the boy through his round lenses, moustache bristling a little in agitation. "Remember how much pain you were in afterwards?"  
  
As if he'd forget; each time, his return to what now stood for 'normalcy' had been followed by days and nights of a strange, wracking ache-- pervasive, not centered in any one particular place but riddling every limb and particularly bad along the hipjoints and the longer bones. It made sense when you considered that these were the places that grew the most during the natural rise from pre- to post-adolescence; he might have backslid into what his body considered to be 'safe', but his cells remembered the forced growth and its agony, and it had been worst when he'd attempted to sleep. Agasa had provided painkillers; Ai had given him nutrient pills and suggested that he drink a lot of water and try not to die, as his corpse would have a number of anomalies that might lead to suspicion were an autopsy done.  
  
"We'll be monitoring and controlling the change this time; you'll be on heavy IV drip, and hopefully providing large amounts of 'building blocks' for your cells will mitigate the problems we had before." That was the transformed scientist herself, talking as she typed; from where Shinichi sat he could see the screen's reflected lights on her pale, small-child face. "If it works well enough, we'll take the line of inquiry further. Who knows? I might volunteer to be the next test subject myself." She flashed him a cool little sideways smile, reserve breaking briefly; Ai was always happiest (or what passed for happy with her) while pursuing a fruitful experiment to its conclusion.  
  
She turned back to her keyboard. "Of course," she said thoughtfully, "there are risks. There are always risks. Your heart might not be able to take the strain; you might have problems with blood clots in your lungs, pulmonary thrombosis; there's the chance of a stroke or an embolism. We won't know until we take the step." Characteristically, she did not ask if he was  _willing_  to make the attempt; she simply assumed that he was.  
  
 _Shows how well Ai knows me... or how predictable I am, I guess._  Because he would, of course.  
  
"We'll have to set something up so Ran doesn't have a coronary herself," Shinichi muttered, accepting his fate along with a glass of orange juice and a couple of cookies to bring his blood-sugar back up. (Ai threw a disapproving look at Agasa, who cringed slightly; the man was totally whipped.) "Maybe my 'parents' could pick me up for a week? Take me to Hokkaido or something." The Professor nodded absently, scribbling something down on a pad to show to Ai, and Shinichi propped his feet up on the Professor's coffeetable with a sigh.   
  
 _Guinea-pig time again, just like I told Kid last week._  He stared out the huge windows across the room, sipping his juice. Outside, it was dark; night had come quickly this evening, and from where he sat he could just make out the outlines of the Kudo estate's upper floors next door. Which made him wonder how a certain visitor to that estate was doing tonight, and what, and--  
  
* * *  
  
Across the way, nestled into an armchair in the Kudo library, Kaitou Kid turned the pages of his latest find, nicked from the library's dusty upper shelves. Written by an author he'd never heard of before, it nevertheless provided a fascinating read, tracking the adaptation of Campbell's Hero's Journey through various applications in popular media.  _Will have to keep an eye on this Iris Gordon,_  Kid mused, setting the book aside momentarily. He had helped himself to coffee from the Kudo kitchen, and had to admit that it was at least as good a brew as any commercial coffeehouse could offer. The warmth of it soothed him and relaxed his muscles, a welcome respite from the constant tension that was an unavoidable byproduct of having something to be wary of. Though he trusted Shinichi further than he was comfortable admitting, security breaches happened to the best of them, and no reassurances to the contrary would make him truly convinced that the disused mansion was a secure location.  
  
Kid stood from his chair with a soft groan, walking a circle around the room to stretch out and refresh his muscles. He'd been studying for hours, now - since directly after school, when Kuroba and he had skived off of walking home with Aoko and came straight (by the most roundabout way possible) to the mansion. As he'd anticipated, Kudo the elder had stocked his shelves with all sorts of research material, how-to guides, opinionated treatises, questionably legal advice, and more.  
  
 _No better bookshelf than a writer's,_  Kid thought to himself as he returned to his seat, hopping into place with his toes tucked under to keep them warm. Putting aside the Gordon book, which was really just pleasure reading he had grabbed from the shelf on a whim, Kid turned his attention back to the more pertinent resources, the reasons why he'd come to the mansion tonight at all.  
  
 _Oh, Tantei-kun, you will be_ _ever_ _so irritated with me, won't you? Using your father's library for heist work._  Kid snickered to himself, a child too proud of his scheming to keep quiet. In the privacy of the library, there was no need for his Poker Face.  _We are going to have so much fu---_  
  
A clatter from somewhere in the house interrupted him, and he looked up warily, putting his current work aside with deliberate silence.  _...now what is_ _that?_ _Wasn't from the front door...wasn't from the kitchen._  
  
It was from the cellar; not the 'private' entrance, but from the more visible one, the door that led out into a steep little stairwell, half-hidden by the untrimmed grass of the Kudo's yard. Someone (two someones, from the sound of it) was jimmying the door open. Their voices filtered through, hissing whispers that weren't nearly as quiet as they obviously thought they were.  
  
"--shutUP, man!" The door scraped in with a jarring sound. A pry-bar of some sort clattered to the ground, its clang muffled by the thud of a heavy foot.  
  
"Fuck off, there's nobody around here, this place's been empty for almost a year. Grab that an' c'mon, there'll be shit we can sell." Shuffling feet, moving towards the stairs...  
  
"Why're the lights on, Rico?"  
  
"Timer. Keeps people like us out, like we don' pay attention to the mail an' paper stopping? An' rich pricks deserve to be ripped off, anyway."  
  
 _Is_ _that_ _it,_  Kid grumbled to himself, setting his book down and silently stealing his way across the library to the hallway, then down its length to the stairs that headed upwards. The lamp wasn't on to light them, so they provided a modicum of cover in which Kid could prepare his retaliation. The potential irony of the situation registered to him, but only vaguely; to use the same word to describe his profession and these two's clumsy idle amusements....  
  
Well. It was a grossly inaccurate association, and that was putting it politely. Limited by the small, emergency-disguise kit that he had on him, Kid worked quickly to prepare himself for a role altogether more imposing than the easy-going high school student he appeared to be.  
  
They came into view, two heads cautiously poking up into the dimly-lit kitchen as the door to the cellar proper creaked open. The older of the two, a dirty blond sort with stubble and the kind of edgy, twitchy grimace that generally belonged to a member of Japan's Junior Crack-Smoker's Union, took a long look through the narrow opening before shoving the door wide. "Come ON, I said. You are such a friggin' whiner, Hoji."  
  
Hoji (younger, a little less strung out looking but obviously not one of Nature's brightest bulbs) proved this to be true by hanging back. "Swear to God, Rico, you get me busted, my old man's gonna kill my ass. He said--"  
  
"Shut. Up." The bolder Rico moved out into the kitchen, eyeing the appliances. "Hey, Krupps coffeemaker. Nice."  
  
"Yeah..." Hoji followed, eyes widening as he took in the Kudo house's furnishings... before slowing to a dead halt. "Rico? Why do I smell coffee, man? Like,  _fresh_ coffee?"  
  
 _Because you're about to get your ass handed to you, you idiotic smudge of humanity._  Kid did not say this out loud. No, his Poker Face - and the eventual payoff of the scheme he was concocting - ensured his silence. Still, he allowed the sneering disgust that he felt to show on his face as he straightened his jacket (an old one with patches on the elbows, rather university-professor-chic), gave a final adjustment to his headpiece, and hit the trigger on his handheld remote.  
  
On the second floor landing, a tiny but quality speaker projected a rattling, then the very characteristic clack of a gun being cocked. In response to these sounds, Kid cleared his throat and projected his voice, as though he spoke from the same room that the "gun" was located.  
  
"Now, Mistress... that's somewhat...rash..." He coughed, raspy smoker's voice shredding itself on the sussurant syllables. "I'll just take a toddle...downstairs...see what all the ruckus is about," he continued, slowly bringing his voice back to himself as he began to shuffle down the last third of the staircase. Moving more quickly than his alias might have been capable, Kid arrived in the kitchen before the two intruders had much time to react. Stooped over, his skin mottled with hastily-painted liver spots that ran all the way up into his "balding" hairline, Kid clutched at one pocket, seeking its contents, as he pointed shakily at the two intruders with the other.  
  
"Young sirs, you are trespassing."  
  
The two thugs, frozen from the moment the 'gun' had been cocked, stood rooted in place. Hojo, visibly beginning to hyperventilate, swayed slightly as his body attempted to bolt without his feet actually moving. But Rico's eyes were darting nervously all over the available view, and they narrowed at the sight of the old man. "Not lookin' for any trouble," he murmured, trying to locate where the more important sound had come from. "Don' do anything, you hear me? Nobody wants to get hurt here." His companion shot him a disbelieving look, and Rico smirked as one hand slid towards his back pocket for whatever reassurance he had hidden there.  
  
"In that case, you'll want to remove your hand from your weapon," Kid snapped, without breaking his vocal tenor. He discarded the slow weakness of it, and of his character in general, as very unfeigned anger fueled him like a flame beneath a kettle. Now he - as eighty-three-year-old Asahino-san, one of the lesser-used disguises the Kid kept on file - was pissed off. "I assure you, there is little you can withdraw from that pocket that will help you. Leave now."  
  
"Rico, let's just  _leave,"_  hissed Hoji, tugging at the other's arm; Rico jerked away from his fellow housebreaker, Adam's Apple bobbing in his throat as he deliberately spat on the kitchen floor. As he spoke, the more timid Hoji edged behind him and began to back down the cellar stairs.  
  
"Fuck off, old man. Your old lady up there got a gun? I can't see her from here, she can't see me enough to aim." The blackjack slid out, now, twelve inches of folded leather and lead weights, ugly and flexible as a snake. "What're you gonna do 'bout me if I want to stay, maybe take a few souvenirs?" Without moving a step to either side, the thug reached out his free hand towards a set of kitchen knives in a nearby block. "Like mebbee these," he said, beginning to grin.  
  
 _"Ri_ co--" implored Hoji from behind him, sweating.  
  
It was doubtful that either of the thugs could have really seen Kid's next movement. The easy thing to watch, though, was the way that the blade-edged steel card vibrated where it had embedded itself two centimeters into the wooden block that held the kitchen knives. Rico's hand, a scant distance above that, was frozen in place.  
  
Hand inside his jacket pocket again, misdirecting the thugs' glances from the bulge of his bulky card gun under his jacket, Kid let his expression fall into a very unequivocal frown. "It seems I have a blackjack too," he commented lightly, the rasp of his persona's rough voice making the arch comment seem strangely placed. "Do you have an ace of spades? Or a club? I have some of those, too."  
  
Rico's mouth worked; he couldn't seem to find the words to answer, but stared from the embedded card to the old man and back; the card's thin edges glinted blue-silver in the dim lighting, sharp enough to bleed sparks. At last he said, very quietly, "Oh. Fuck. Uh--" and began to shuffle backwards towards the stairs. His bark, like that of so many other mongrels, was apparently much braver than his bite.  
  
With the hand "fumbling" in his jacket pocket, Kid pressed his remote button again. From upstairs, the sound of a gun cocking clattered through the house - and Kid bet money on the fact that the kids were probably too scared to wonder why it needed cocked twice. In character, he called over his shoulder, projecting as "best" as he could - which was still rather feeble.  
  
"Mistress, don't worry, they're leaving now...Oh, I don't think she's heard me. She'll be down any minute now."  
  
That was all it took; what seemed like momentary inattention was enough for Rico, and he did his best turn and dive for cover. It was a pity that this meant that his leap took him down the cellar stairs; it was a  _double_  pity that Hoji hadn't gone very far as yet. The thud that one body made colliding with the other was quite, quite satisfactory.  
  
"And  _stay out_ ," Kid grumbled, harummphing and muttering as he closed the cellar door, locked it, and then expertly jammed the lock. "Damn kids."  
  
The scrambling, panicked flight of the two hoodlums across the cellar and out the door was obvious and noisy ("Toldja,  _toldja_  we shoudn't--" "Shut the hell up, Hoji!") as was the slam of that same door shutting behind them, hard enough to rattle glasses in the kichen. The Jack of Clubs in the knife block seemed to grin.  
  
Kid tugged the card free, frowning at the deep cut in the block. The card's progression had actually been stopped by hitting the flat of one of the knife blades; sliding it free from the block, he could see it had chipped where the less refined steel of the card had hit. "You owe me a new knife, you ignorant, inglamorous, brute force--" He bit off his words before the conventionally insulting terminology could come out, though what he'd already levied against the blockheaded intruders was pretty strong stuff, considering the stock that Kid held in performing the thieving profession with care, precision, and of course honor.  
  
He sighed, running one hand through his hair - then thinking better of the absentminded motion. "Put the knife down, Kaitou," he muttered to himself. " _Then_  be exhaustively frustrated." The goons had truly ruined his mood for the evening, and it was extremely unlikely he'd get any more work done while brooding over their behavior. Sullenly, Kid packed up his things, closed down the mansion, and let himself out the secret back passageway, making sure to lock every door and window behind him as he went. He'd have to remind Shinichi to get the cellar lock replaced, and ideally to replace the door altogether with a new one, sturdier, with more locks on it.  
  
Kid shuffled his way out of the mansion, still in disguise, and sighed up at the moon as he came out into the fresh night air. It was only slightly chill; autumn was coming, but slowly. The moon above him was breathtaking, as she always tended to be. Wistfully, he closed one eye and raised his hand, thumb extended, lining it up to rub her curves like he might trace the arc of another's face.  
  
He firmly shook that thought away even as it formed. It was too lovely a night to be sullen, Kid resolved, and too lovely a moon above him to show her an unhappy face. Smiling broadly at her, following the sidewalk by habit rather than sight, Kid let her glow pull deep breaths from him in a steady give-and-take tide. By the time he'd left the block, his foul mood was slowly and steadily dissipating.  
  
*  
  
 _Click. Clickclickclickclacktapclackclackclickclick... click... tapclick..._  
  
The cursor winked like an eye as Shinichi's typing slowed. Choosing his words very carefully, he said:  _What do you mean, 'amateurs'?_  
  
  
He was, of course, supposed to be doing his homework; and he was, of course, long since finished with said homework. The Detective Of The East had, secretly, rather enjoyed working his way through their home reading list for the year; there were old favorites in there, and Ran's lingering annoyance over the whole library incident had been mollified by finding Conan sprawled across the couch, absorbed in [ _Penguin Shubotai,_](http://www.yamaneko.org/einfo/mgzn/jcb_e1205.htm#penguin) one of Saito Hiroshi's classics. He'd turned bright red; she'd sat down beside him, flipping through the pages and laughing over the Penguin Exploratory Team's antics. "Shinichi used to take these on the train when we were your age," she'd told him, her brown hair straggling in feather-soft strands down from where she'd tied it back; it softened the line of her jaw, lending a sudden look of Eri to her features. "He used to get mad when I'd steal them out of his backpack, but he let me read his copies anyway."  
  
And speaking of stealing... The boy chewed the end of his pencil, typing again.  _And -why- am I going to need a new cellar door lock?_  
  
Kid held his apple in his mouth to free both hands for his response. Sprawled across his big queen-size bed at the Kuroba mansion - careless, yes, but by this point being concerned that Shinichi would trace his IP address seemed rather redundant - the thief lay surrounded by layers and layers of research material, striated stacks of books on top of papers on top of notebooks on top of open, face-down books on top of papers on top of magazines on top of more books, all of this surrounded by Pocky boxes and mochi packages. A movie, black and white, played quietly on the large television on the other end of the room; his laptop sat on an overturned tea tray, lifting it a safe distance from the soft, fluffy, computer-fan-smothering comforter.  _well rly a whle nw cellar door. this 1's a bit flimsy, & the hinge pins 2 easy 2 lift_  
  
The text that crawled into the chatwindow seemed to drag its feet in reluctance.  _I'm only going to regret it if I ask why, aren't I? Nevr mind, I'll gt the Profssor to call sombody. Damn E ky is sticking, brb._  There was a brief pause.  _There, better. Hate it when that happens. Oh- remember the talk we had last week about a certain pharmacist? Clinical trials? Looks like we're about ready to go._  
  
 _aw and i had such fun embellishments added to the story too_  Kid mock-pouted, unable to leave the opening completely uncommented.  _but u do need a bttr security system or u'll be missing things in a bit. the trapdoors r compromised probably.  
  
about the pharmacist._  Kid frowned slightly at the screen, and Shinichi's words; this was where his real attention lay.  _have a day yet? & where will edogawa go while u arrive?_  
  
  
The answer came back quickly this time, a rush of data. Shinichi's typing was usually fairly consistent in speed, but not tonight.  _We'll start the prep work Friday morning. Agasa's going to escort Conan to the train station in Shinjuku to meet his 'parents'- that ought to be far enough to make it feasible, and it'll be during school hours so Ran can't come along. She_  
  
(On the other side of the screen, Shinichi hesitated, eyebrows creasing a thin line between them as he tried to put the sense of alarm he'd had earlier into words.)  
  
 _She doesn't seem suspicious so much as- I don't know, aware that something's up. Aware? Awake? Something. She knows it'll be a week, she saw the school permit form. Not stupid, not blind either._  
  
Kid frowned, mulling the idea over.  _but if ur going 2 tell her...the story is just 2 keep her frm freaking til sk can show up, y? y a whole week? u staying sk tht long?_  
  
  
 _Prep work and recovery,_  came the answer promptly.  _Pharmacist-sama has this theory that my body's established a norm in its current state, not the original. Keeps reverting in self-defense. So she wants to 'convince' my system that it's growing naturally. Won't last more than a day at peak, but if it works without any problems then- Think she got the idea from studies on Hutchinson–Gilford progeria syndrome (Wiki it, good article.) Not pretty reading; hope I don't get stuck as an octogenarian by mistake._  Again, the rhythm of the text was rapid and precise.  
  
 _now that wld b hilarious,_  Kid replied, tabbing away from several spreadsheets which he had been filling with selected information from a database page hosted on a British university's system.  _& i could call u benjamin button._  Not really expecting Shinichi to get the reference - it had been a quietly-received film, especially outside of America - Kid simply continued with the conversation.  _couldnt she stop it, tho? once u got to what size u wanted, turn the med off? or get th rest of it out of u?  
  
u sound determind tho,_  Kid added, smiling slightly.  _like ur excited._  
  
'Excited'? Elbow on the desk and chin in hand, Shinichi choked briefly. Given who he was talking to-- someone whose idea of a good time included fleeing through mid-air from the authorities on an unpowered aircraft-- he supposed that having your bones, muscles and nerves used as a scientist's private chemical playground sounded like a really good time. And yet,  _yes_  he was excited; he'd be himself again, even if it was only for a few hours-- his hands would be the right size, he'd look at the world from the right angles and the right height, he'd, oh God, he'd be...  _back._  Just for a little while.  
  
 _I am excited. It isn't just the kiddy school and the being treated like a child and the having to depend on everybody, it's not even the physical aspect. Hard to explain, it's like... this, being reverted ten years, is a violation of natural law. MY natural law. No matter how much or how little I can deal with it, it's wrong every second- not a role I'm playing and not a disguise, -wrong.- I don't hate it, I could be dead and the fact that I'm not is a miracle. But just for a little while I can be right again.  
  
So- yeah. Excited, terrified, all of that._  Shinichi hit the enter key with a heavy click and sat staring at his own text, only then realizing that sometime during the conversation he'd begun to breathe deeply, pulse speeding up to match his breath. His mouth quirked upwards at one corner, and Kid would have recognized the small, cocky grin there.  
  
 _thats more like it,_  Kid replied quickly, suspecting that his own smirk matched Shinichi's.  _i say this requires a celebration. drinks? but ur pharmacist wouldn't like that. let's get dinner, then, or lunch. some sort of celebratory meal. and if u kick it, u can say that 4 ur last meal, u dined in the presence of the prince of thieves. royalty. how about it?_  He paused, frowning. Though he was honestly craving okonamiyaki, eating at an okonamiyaki-ya would inevitably lead to awkward questions and possibly discomfort; the menu was much too limiting, considering his own preferences. Instead, he ran down a mental list of alternatives, discarding fast food joints and stall-format eateries as a matter of course; too chaotic a setting for him to feel comfortable. Somewhere slower-paced, with a booth that could limit visibility and provide walls to their backs.  _family restaurant maybe?_  
  
  
Unseen by the 'Prince of Thieves', Shinichi rolled his eyes.  _Lead on, Kid-dono._  His fingers tapdanced across the keys steadily, showing no sign of the unevenness from before.  _Let me know when my palaquin'll be arriving, I'll be ready._  
  
 _u said they start wrming up the unshrink beam on friday, y? let's for thurs nite. youll know my signal._  
  
* * *  
  
The next few days saw the arrangements for The Experiment falling into place with almost alarming ease. Paperwork for school had been produced courtesy of Agasa (with the same signature on it that arrived in Mouri's mail each month on a check for Conan's upkeep), a week's worth of homework had been scheduled and packed up, the Shonen Tantei had demanded postcards from Hokkaido, Ai had been caught jotting down notes on what exactly he ate every day at lunch in her tiny, exact script, and a white dove or two was spotted hanging out with the schoolyard birds at Teitan Elementary, which nobody thought unusual...  
  
Ran had, once the initial surprise had worn off, been rather quiet about the whole thing; it was just as Shinichi'd described it to Kid-- she didn't act as if she  knewsomething so much as she acted as if she was aware that  _there was something to know._  But all she did was smile at him, ruffle his hair and ask him to bring her back something special from his trip.  
  
Irony, he'd thought to himself at the time, was quite the bitch, wasn't it?  
  
But now it was Wednesday and he was walking home from school. The next day'd see him finishing up at school and then eating dinner with an internationally wanted criminal (though for all Shinichi knew, it might  _look_  like he was dining with his mother, or worse. He just prayed that Kid didn't reprise the sexy librarian, or any variation thereof, or else he might just start throwing flatware.) The next morning, he'd go off to Agasa's to be injected with life-altering drugs.  
  
 _At least my life's not boring. Somewhat insane and filled with moments of terror, but not boring._  
  
Speaking of which-- as a tall man in the jacket and tie joined Conan from where he'd been waiting beside the sidewalk, quite visible, the boy swallowed hard and put on his best Inquisitive Child Prodigy face. "Nakamori-keibu?" he asked with a good show of startlement.   
  
Tall and grim-faced, the ever-present pipe clenched between his teeth, the man looked like the proverbial shoe-about-to-fall incarnate. "Keep walking," he grunted as he shortened his stride and Conan lengthened his.  
  
For a little while, that's all they did: walk, neither one saying a word to the other.  _Any minute now,_  thought Shinichi behind Conan's mask of puzzled glances,  _any minute now. 'Who are you? Why are you a kid when you're not a kid? What--'_  
  
"I don't want to know."  
  
The tone was harsh, if fairly low. Shinichi blinked, and when he looked up at Nakamori there was no difference between his bewilderment and Edogawa Conan's. "Wh-what?"  
  
"I don't want to know." The Inspector drew on his pipe, air hissing through the stem. "I don't want to know about you, and I don't want to have to ask. You understand me, boy?" He shot a dark look downwards; and the way he clenched his pipe in his teeth was angry. "Don't  _make_  me ask; don't force me to look into-- anything I don't have to. Because you don't get to be where I am without being good at what you do. You remember that."  
  
They walked on a little, the tall man and the small boy. Shinichi blinked several times, trying to process just what he'd heard. "Nakamori-keibu, I don't--" he began.  
  
The man looked down at him again. "Shut up," he said flatly. "It's simple. You don't make me ask questions... about you or  _anyone else..."_  (and for a flash of a second one hand mimed tipping a hat) "...and I won't have to go after the answers." Nakamori shrugged. "How much plainer do I have to be?" They stopped at a streetcorner, waiting for the light to change.  
  
"That's... plain enough." Shinichi stared up at the man, wondering if it could possibly be that simple. "I understand."  
  
"Good," said Nakamori flatly as the light turned and the crosswalk signal began to beep. "I've got enough headaches; I don't need any more." With that he stomped off down the sidewalk, long legs carrying him quickly away as the boy stared in silence.  
  
...and that, apparently, was that.  
  
Conan stood at the streetcorner, watching Nakamori's squared shoulders shrink (oh, irony) into the distance of the busy afternoon street, waiting for the punchline. There  _had_  to be a trick about this. A trap, a hidden mic?  _Oh, now you're just being ridiculous, Kudo,_  he grumbled to himself. But still, the unease remained. Nakamori had sounded completely sincere - deadly so, in fact - and yet it still seemed too convenient.  
  
 _Truth will out,_  he sighed. Only then did he look up to the street signs to get his bearings - and groan in frustration. They'd gone three blocks past his turn, and he didn't have the skateboard with him. Grumbling something inarticulate, Shinichi headed back the direction he'd come from, hands in his pockets and head bowed, brow lightly creased. This rather brooding pose was soon ruined by the abrupt addition of a white dove.  
  
"You have  _got_  to be kidding me," Shinichi muttered slowly, coming to a stop and standing up straight. As he moved, the light, fluffy weight of the dove perched on his head adjusted with his posture, maintaining its balance easily, and cooing happily as it did.  
  
He glanced around, a flicker of eyes to either side. "Shoo," he hissed, raising a hand in hopes that the bird would either shy off or hop onto a finger. But the dove merely burbled at him, apparently delighted at the attention. A woman and her daughter passed by along the sidewalk, staring, and the child giggled and pointed. "Gaaahhh! SHOO. Fly home to your master! Go!" He flapped his hand desperately, but the dove simply climbed down his hair ("Ow!") onto a handy shoulder and murmured contentedly there.  
  
The detective sighed. Life-altering drugs were looking pretty good at the moment.  
  
* * *  
  
Thursday evening, just a bit before dinnertime, Moona and Bracken - a rose grey dove with white panda spots around her eyes, with whom Shinichi had become acquainted over the last month or so - arrived at the boy detective's window at Agasa's house. Tapping on the glass to get his attention, they then sidled up beside each other, cooing and grooming each other's napes affectionately.  
  
With a chuckle, Shinichi climbed onto the bed to reach the window, set higher in the wall than standard ones. Opening it enough for the doves to flutter in, and leaving it open so they could exit at will, Shinichi checked their ankles for messages. They carried one each, very brief.  
  
Moona's read,  _Italiano-sama Bistro._  He had to chuckle at the juxtaposition of the names.  
  
Bracken's read,  _blonde, tall, fuchsia purse._  
  
Shinichi groaned. "Not again..."  
  
Fuchsia was kind of a bright hot pink, wasn't it? And Kid would be certain to wear something that'd match.  _Just once,_  thought Shinichi as he headed towards Agasa's front door,  _just once I'd like to be there when Kid clothes-shops and tries things on. I mean,_ _how_ _?? The dresses and shoes, okay fine, but there're all those bras and... things. Does he actually wear--_  He shut off the thought hurriedly, wondering why the juxtaposition of  _Kid_  and  _things_  made his ears burn.  
  
"Be back in a few hours, don't hold dinner for me," he called, slipping out the door. Agasa's affable grunt and Ai's terse  _No caffeine!_  followed him onto the sidewalk, and he left the two to their preparations. He only hoped they'd remember to eat; when they got like this, it was almost impossible to direct their attention to anything but their work, two very dissimilar poster-children for the OCD community.  
  
On the street, Moona and Bracken fluttered ahead of him, leading him toward the restaurant by way of a somewhat circuitous path. They flew from perch to perch, branch to post to wire, leaving enough pauses for Shinichi and his skateboard to keep up. After a while, as the residential neighborhood faded into a more commercial area, houses and apartment buildings interspersed with a collection of shops and storefronts, the doves broke away from Shinichi and headed up, flying away to an undoubtedly private shelter. Shinichi proceeded forward, scanning the storefronts for signs of the right fusion of Italian and Japanese tastes. He found it rather quickly - it would have been very hard for him to miss the massive Italian flag hanging out front - and proceeded inside, ducking through the second flag which had been, questionably, cut and split to form curtains across the front door.  
  
 _Okay, where is he?_  Shinichi scanned the front room of the restaurant once, then again, looking for bright blonde or pink colors, and coming up empty both times. With a frown, he looked again, this time wandering a little bit past the front desk to try to see into all the booths.  
  
"Excuse me, little boy, can I help you?" The hostess sounded bemused - whether at the fact that Conan had arrived alone, or at his nosing around, he couldn't tell.  
  
"I'm looking for nee-san," he answered, in his best Perky Little Bozu voice. "She's tall and blonde and she's wearing pink."  
  
"Oh, you must be the one she told me about," the hostess smiled, crouching down to come to Shinichi's level. "She'd said you were a little younger than her, but I didn't think you'd be this young! Well, follow me."  
  
Confused, Shinichi did, trailing the hostess through the main dining area into a smaller room in the back, where plush benches and high-backed booths surrounded every table, and little tabletop candles added to the artfully dimmed lighting. Leading Conan to the back corner table, the hostess stopped just short of the booth, extending one hand politely in invitation. From where he stood, Shinichi could only see the corner of Kid's skirt, which stopped just short of his knees, and was, indeed, fuchsia.  
  
"Enjoy your date, little sir," the hostess cooed, and left.  
  
 _....DATE?_  
  
As soon as the hostess had departed, the "girl" in the booth leaned out, twisting around to see Conan, and a big smile lit up her face, revealing her....braces.  
  
Shinichi goggled at her, taking in the whole picture as he walked numbly over to his side of the booth and hopped in, propping the skateboard in its corner. Kid was indeed blonde tonight, and was indeed wearing a shade of fuchsia that matched his purse rather neatly; what Shinichi hadn't expected, though, was that Kid was...  
  
"Hiiiii," Kid trilled, beaming guilelessly across the table at Shinichi. "I'm Tsukiyoshi, but you can call me Akaru-chan!" Kid smoothed down his skirt, flattening the white and cream ruffles that accented every square inch of fabric. His pigtails, tied near his nape with glittery pink ties, swished across his shoulders as he spoke, his whole body animated with the energy of "Akaru-chan's" excitement. "Momma said you were really smart for your age, she said I should be polite and not think less of you cause you're short. How old are you? Ten? I'm twelve, but I'm reeeeally tall for my age. It's cause Momma's a gaijin, and I take after her. She says I'm gonna be an Amazon when I grow up."  
  
Abject horror. It was like being savaged by a Hajuku Girl version of HelloKitty.  
  
 _BAD DREAM. THIS IS A BAD DREAM. Hello, brain? We can wake up now. Any time now._ _ **ANY. TIME. NOW. PLEASE.**_ _.....I feel like a_ _complete_ _pedophile._  Shinichi struggled to say something, anything; his sense of self-preservation curled up into a ball and hid, and the small voice that came out of his mouth was Edogawa Conan's, not a trace of anything else lingering in it anywhere.  
  
"Um. I'm um. Seven. Teen. I mean Seven. I mean--" Shinichi closed his eyes carefully. "Kid?" he said quietly. "I'm going to strangle you with your own pigtails."  
  
Kid closed his eyes, his expression beatific. "Oooh, kinky," he purred, sotto voce to match Shinichi's careful pitch.  
  
The arrival of a rotund, obviously amused waiter and a set of menus spared Shinichi's abused cerebellum any further damage for the next few minutes; by the time they had ordered (green tea with honey for Akaru-chan and plain water for himself) he'd managed to gather a few of his wits back from where they'd fled to. "You," he said with disbelieving eyes taking in his 'date's' entire outfit, "are insane. You  _absolutely_  deserve anything and everything Nakamori comes up with to do to you if he ever catches you." The hands opposite his own were primly folded; their nails were as pink as the rest of the outfit. "How long did this-- this-- How long did it take?"  
  
"Oh, I dunno," Akaru-chan demurred, fidgeting with her very elaborate-looking neckpiece (it involved frills of fabric, lace, jewels, AND fur) and smiling coyly at her companion. "It took me just  _forever_  to get my hair just perfect, but I already had the costume -" Pause, titter of very fake laughter - "Oh, silly me,  _outfit_ , picked out for such a  _very_  long time. I've been wanting to get all dressed up for you for a while now, show you what a  _lady_  I can be."  
  
Leaning in, conspiratorially close, Akaru-chan hooked a finger at Conan, encouraging him to draw near. When he had, with deep suspicion writ over every inch of his face, Kid dropped the act and grinned at Shinichi, so pleased with himself that his smile could almost be called feral. "You wouldn't believe what a pain this outfit is, in the undergarments department," he laughed, keeping his voice low (his real voice, Shinichi noted, though whether this was a relief or not - considering its juxtaposition with the outfit - he wasn't yet certain), even through his humor, so that it wouldn't travel. "They just don't  _make_  strawberry-printed stockings in sizes above a certain level!"  
  
"Really?" responded Shinichi rather dryly. "I can think of a few special-interest websites I've seen online that I'm sure could help you out there." He stared at the Amazingly Pink Akaru-chan, thought for a second, and then reached across and flicked one finger at the 'girl's' nose, barely brushing it. "You had a piece of glitter stuck on you," he said confidingly in Conan's normal voice, scooting back onto his padded bench. "See?" He displayed the digit, a bit of fuchsia sparkle decorating the very tip.  
  
 _Detective got your_ _ **nose**_ _, Kid._  With some alarm, Shinichi realized that he was having to fight back a very Conanish giggle; and he wondered if the thief's version of lunacy could possibly be contagious.  
  
Kid grinned, recognizing the gesture, and rewarded Shinichi with a very exaggerated and girlish 'mouuu' of distress. "You'll make my eyes cross trying to follow you when you do that, Conan-kun~," Akaru-chan whined. Guilelessly, however, Kid was busy returning tit for tat: his hand darted across the tabletop as well, the bells and charms on his lacy, ribbon-bedecked wristlet jangling as his fingers snipped at Conan's nose.  _Got you back,_  his smirk said, as he opened up his palm to reveal a tiny spray of silvery coral bells nestled among three brightly shining four-leaf clovers. These he presented to Conan, taking care to nestle them carefully into the detective's small palm.  
  
 _Coral bells for challenge. Clover for luck._  
  
The next moment stretched for just a second longer than it should have, silence and stillness between the pair as the thief offered honesty with his gaze and gift, and the detective received both with somewhat startled quietness. Then, before Shinichi could actually respond, "Akaru-chan" was waving down the waiter noisily and impatiently, simply  _desperate_  for a big order of breadsticks, right this moment, she was just starving, and actually, couldn't she have  _two_  cups of garlic butter to dip them in? The distraction was a rather transparent ploy to close off Shinichi's chance to respond to Kid's gift, but - though the thief surely knew how easy to read it was - Kid acted oblivious.  
  
The boy's hand tightened around the tiny charms as the 'girl' nattered away at their smiling, obviously-enchanted waiter. Part of him wondered what had just happened.  
  
Because, really,  _Kudo Shinichi_  didn't get things anymore. Or not much; even the watch, shoes, suspender, glasses and soccerball-belt were all things to allow  _Conan_ to feasibly continue his existence, not Shinichi. He had a box that held the artifacts of his hidden life, kept beneath his bed in the Kudo house: the thinning stream of mail (mostly invitations and the occasional fan letter), his old wallet, a few postcards from his parents... not a lot else, because he lived, breathed, ate, slept and survived as Edogawa Conan.  
  
The tiny charms glinted between his fingers. What was he-- where could he-- oh hell. He'd find a place for them; Shinichi knew the symbolism and understood the meaning, and as he slipped them quietly in his pocket something inside his chest caught, seemed to knot around itself and turn over in a way he didn't quite understand.  
  
 _Thank you._  
  
When the breadsticks arrived, Akaru-chan offered one to Conan-kun, and through the disguise, it was Kaitou Kid's soft, nuanced smile that lit Akaru-chan's purple eyes (obviously vanity contacts, just the type of thing an overindulged girl like her would delight in). That was something about Kid that Shinichi hadn't noticed before, but in this costume, it was more evident. With every inch of his real face covered or obscured by Akaru-chan's theatrical makeup, and even its contours reshaped by the latex prosthetics which rounded his angular, very male face into a chubby-cheeked young girl's, the only scrap of "Kid" left remaining was to be found behind his purple contact lenses. With lush fake eyelashes laden with carefully-applied mascara and honest-to-god rhinestones glued to the outside tips, expertly layered eyeshadow that changed the apparent shape of his eyelids, adding more of a Westerner's fold - Kid didn't look  _bad_  so much as sickeningly glitter-sugar-puff-sweet and utterly dismissable. But somehow, maybe only because Shinichi knew what to look for, Kid's eyes were still there behind the disguise, and the thief's insanely manic good humor was just as evident when conveyed only with his eyes, as it was when he was in full Kaitou Kid regalia, uncovered cheshire grin and all.  
  
He was still absolutely brain-boggling to stare at, though, so Shinichi turned back to his menu, still trying to decide what to order. Had he read this page already?  
  
On the other side of the table, Kid leaned back in his seat, primly folding delicate, long-nailed hands over one knee. In lieu of the elusive strawberry-printed stockings, he instead had plain white ones woven in a subtle lace pattern, and one fingertip idly traced the patterns in the knit. With his head on a pretty, coy tilt, he silently watched his detective companion, apparently without snide, snarky, witty, embarrassing, or otherwise difficult commentary for the given moment.  
  
Turning another page of the menu, Shinichi watched Kid over the top edge a little quizzically. It was weird, the more he looked at him the more he saw him and the less he saw the disguise. It was still there, it just wasn't... valid? important? relevant?  _What's the word I'm looking for?  
  
Ah. 'Real.'_  Shinichi found himself smiling.  
  
The waiter came back their way, beaming over his moustache; "Have the little sir and madame decided what they'd like for dinner this evening?" He leaned in confidingly. "Tonight's special is the Tortellini a la Zucca, with a side salad of fresh spinach and a wine vinaigrette. Ahh--" He blinked, his smile faltering just slightly. "...Would you like to see a children's menu, perhaps?" Shinichi gave him a Look. "No, then."  
  
"I'm ready to order," said the boy firmly. "K-- Akaru-chan?"  
  
"I'm ready," the girl fluttered, beaming up at the waiter with a gaze that somehow accomplished both 'demanding' and 'adorable' at the same time. "I'd like the linguini with spinach and chicken, please, and a small salad on the side. House dressing please~!" She turned her attention to Shinichi, expectant.  
  
"I'll have the Orata al Cartoccio," said Shinichi, still smiling. "And also a small salad, with the vinaigrette. No spinach."  
  
The waiter looked pleased. "The sea bass? Excellent choice, young sir. I'll be back with your salads in a moment." He bustled away.  
  
"Th-th-th-th-WAIT~!"   
  
An almost visible shudder went up the waiter's back as he froze mid-step, halfway across the room, one foot hovering a few inches off the carpet. He rotated, slowly, to face the corner table, as the rest of the startled diners went slowly back to their meals, and addressed the very wide-eyed insistent look of Akaru-chan.  
  
"Excuse me, young miss?"  
  
"H-h-h-h-he m-m-meant th-the sea chicken. The. Ah. Chicken. The chicken. With the salad."   
  
The waiter's moustache seemed to droop in confusion. "Sea... chicken?" He looked at Shinichi. "Sir?"  
  
"Uh-- right. The chicken's fine." As the man went on his way, Shinichi raised a very confused eyebrow at his... rather oddly nervous 'date'. "What's wrong?"  
  
"Nothing," Kid said brusquely, suddenly needing very much to busy himself with the contents of his purse, a little mirror and lipgloss. "N-nothing at all. The chicken's better here. That's all." His tone, however, was  _far_  from steady.  
  
"You don't like the fish? What's wrong with it?" Shinichi sipped his water, watching Kid suppress an involuntary shudder as Shinichi spoke. His body language had just undergone an abrupt change, and it was more than a little peculiar, it was as if the thief had stumbled during a walk across a flat floor or landed gracelessly wrong at the end of a leap. He frowned, tilting his head. "C'mon, what's the matter?"  
  
"Nothing. Betsu ni." Kid wouldn't look up.  
  
"Uhuh. And you usually freak out over dining choices?" That was a little harsh. Shinichi considered the facts, put two and two and chicken and fish together and came up with a possible answer. "...oh. Well, if it helps, I don't like spiders at all. Can't stand 'em."  
  
Caught off-guard, Kid peeked up over the edge of his makeup mirror, his mouth still frozen in the mid-lipsticking O. "...Oh." He blinked, shoulders still hunched, clearly waiting for the other shoe to drop.  
  
"All those little legs. And they  _crawl."_  The boy shuddered, taking another sip. "And bite. And if you smash them you've got this horrible gooey, crunchy smear. I scream like a little girl-- ah, present company excepted." He glanced back at his dinner companion. "It's not that bad, is it?"  
  
"W-what, spiders? No, they're, ah, they're fine." Kid clicked his lipgloss shut with a definitive snap, putting it away and withdrawing a concealer puff instead. He watched his reflection in his little mirror as he patted it across his cheeks and brow, covering the gloss of sweat that had appeared there in the last few minutes. "They, um, ah." He blinked at the mirror, then up at Shinichi, a very real blush brightening his cheeks to an amusingly pink shade that not even his concealer could completely hide. The color was visible in sharply defined crescents, only on the high parts of his cheeks just under his eyes, where the latex prosthetics didn't cover, and on - amusingly - the tip of his nose, which was flushed very pink indeed.  
  
...which was, actually, really really cu--  _I did not just think that._  Only it was, but. Well. Anyway. Shinichi hurriedly took a longer drink, wondering something that could basically be summed up as What The Hell, Kudo? The silence at the table stretched between them until the boy allowed his shoulders to relax, shrugging slightly. "I won't mention f-- those things if you don't mention the ones with all the legs. Deal?"  
  
 _ **"Deal,"**_  Kid immediately agreed, sotto voce, tone dire. "I, ahm, apologize." He cleared his throat, and then Akaru-chan's voice, mannerisms, and fluttery trill were back in full force. "The chicken here is  _so_  good, Conan-kun, it's just so delicious and moist, I don't know what they do, but Tou-san says he's going to buy the cook and have him cook for us someday!" Conan would swear the glitter on "her" cheeks even trilled along with Akaru-chan, so saccharine were Kid's tones.  _Sparkle-sparkle-desu_ , perhaps?  
  
"'Buy the cook'? Can you do that, Akaru-chan? What if they don't want to sell him?" Time to play along and give Kid a little competition in the acting department; Conan's voice was all innocent inquiry, free of subtext and full of curiosity. "I heard Ojii-san say that people were buying and selling politicians in Tokyo last week. I wonder if they're worth more than cooks, or if you have to pay extra to get a good one?" He swirled the icecubes in his glass around, watching Kid with earnest blue eyes. "He said the problem is, most of them don't stay bought. Maybe your Tou-san could rent the cook?"  
  
 _Wham! Kudo kicks, the ball gets past the goalie! Let's see how the other team responds._  
  
"Politicians are more expensive than cooks, and you have to keep paying for upkeep on them or else they go running away again. Well, that's what Mamma says." Akaru-chan's eyes were intelligent and keen behind the mask of "her" fluttering affectations. "But politicians are like a gift set! If you buy one, you get points toward more of them. If you buy enough, you can get a whole other set for free!" She smiled in a patently serpentine way.  
  
 _Pass out to the left wing...bring it around behind the sweeper's guard..._  
  
"Of course, police officers are kind of the same. They come in different sorts of sets, though. You have to buy the fancy ones, and then you get the basic ones for free. And I heard from Tou-san that you can't buy detectives at  _all._  You have to win those."  
  
 _A long goal shot from the corner...will he make it?_  
  
  
The waiter brought breadsticks, garlic-butter and salads at this point; he'd obviously been watching their conversation-faces, considering the rather fatuous smile that wreathed his face in moustache-- really, thought Shinichi in amusement as he arranged a napkin in his lap, that thing had a life of its own, it was as good as a barometer. If the man had been able to hear the conversation, his face would've displayed an entirely different emotion-- consternation, perhaps. 'Out of the mouths of babes' and all that... He crunched on a breadstick; across from him, 'Akaru-chan' was eating her salad in a very ladylike fashion.  
  
 _Second half._  
  
"So," he said cheerfully, "if detectives are worth more than police officers, politicians and cooks, how do you win them? Is it like a video game where the better you get, the harder it is to win a boss fight? Or like playing sports at school, where everybody wants the same thing but only one team gets it? Or is it more like a race like you see on TV-- one big winner, but everybody who makes it through wins too, sort of?" He bit into a slice of tomato, fighting back a grin. After he'd swallowed, Shinichi continued blithely on. "Everybody wants to win, but not everybody gets the prize. Is the prize worth more because there's only one of it?" He cocked his head a little to the side. "Or is it like Pokemon-- gotta catch 'em all?"  
  
 _Ball in play, no red cards so far. Pitch's wide open._  
  
"Oh, detectives are a dime a dozen." Kid paused. "Well, the analogy fails in its monetary myopicism. But you see my intent, don't you, Conan~kun~?" Akaru-chan's trill and flutter was back in her voice for a moment, though her body language - to avoid alarming any onlookers - had never lost its girlishness. "There's dozens of detectives out there, and just because you can't buy them, it doesn't mean that every one of them is  _valuable_  or anything. They're mostly so very similar, there would be no point in a complete collection." She sighed, laden with the weight of this disappointing verdict, and turned her attention back to her salad. But with a glance up, peeking through her bangs coyly, she couldn't help but add:  
  
"It's really a question of quantity versus quality. There's so many of them, and so  _very_  few worthy targets for them to chase."  
  
Shinichi snorted; he couldn't help himself. "But most thieves don't attempt anything more clever than a smash-and-grab or at the very most cooking the books-- embezzlement, insider trading, forgery... boring. Holmes'd turn up his nose at the majority of them." He raised an eyebrow, adopting a vaguely British tone that mixed oddly with his childish voice: "'My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplace of existence.' Can you place the quote?" He kept the volume down; the hostess was bustling about with a young couple that had just come in, but there was no use in taking chances.  
  
" _The Red Headed League._ " Kid smiled with a fondness for the quote lighting his eyes. "Such a lucky thing for you, then, that you are blessed by one of those very precious 'little problems' which 'help you to do so.'" The return quote was delivered not without self-important irony, and as Akaru-chan smoothed the hairs of one ponytail, Kaitou Kid snickered under his breath for his detective companion. "If the majority of thieves are so commonplace as the majority of detectives, then what are we left with? The exemplary members of each race must seek each other out like lodestones."  
  
The other eyebrow went up as Shinichi considered this; somebody, possibly two somebodies, stood in some danger of getting a swelled head. "'Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward,'" he quoted back from  _The Adventure Of The Blue Carbuncle,_  and then added: "There's another one to keep in mind, too: 'I play the game for the game's own sake.' And also, 'Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.'" Flattery went both ways, after all, especially among professionals, whatever else they were.  
  
He picked up another bread stuck, reaching across to steal a bit of Akaru-chan's garlic butter before saying thoughtfully as Kid sat quite still, watching. "One more, the first one I ever memorized," he said, waving the bread stick; "'When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth.'" Taking a deliberate bite, Shinichi looked away across the dimly-lit restaurant. That last one had always been a favorite of his, and while it worked well as something to keep in mind during murder investigations it was also a slightly painful personal key of the kind that opened doors a person didn't always want opened.  
  
The hostess was coming their way again, followed by the restaurant's newest clients: mid-twenties, well-dressed in the sort of clothes you'd wear for a nice evening out, the young woman carrying a black satin clutch that had an odd weight to it. Shinichi blinked, calculated the very specific shape outlined by the bag's thin fabric and how it sagged, and came up with  _small gun, snubnose? kydex snap-holstered, probably_  before automatically raising his eyes to the woman's face to memorize her features as a possible suspect... and froze. "'Possess our souls in patience and make as little noise as possible,'" he muttered as softly and urgently as possible, yanking his best Conan Face out of wherever it had slid to. "Sato-san? Takagi-san? Uh, hi?"   
  
*

 


	10. "Little black dress, pasta, warm"

  
Warnings for  **gore and pink sparkles.**  Not consecutively.  
  
*  
  
Date & time: Thursday evening.  Location: Italiano-sama Bistro, back room.  Situation: Two disguises, two detectives, no ready cover story.  Problems: Many.  
   
 _Oops.  This could be awkward._  
   
Two "children" looked up through comically widened eyes at the sudden appearance of a pair of adults at the edge of their table.  Two very genuinely wide pairs of familiar adult eyes stared down at the inhabitants of the booth.  Sato Miwako of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, quite obviously out on a date with her partner Takagi Wataru, was the first to speak.  "...Conan-kun?  What on earth are you doing here?"  
   
"Just, ah, having dinner with, uhm,"  Shinichi started, stalling as he looked over to his dinner partner, none other than Kaitou Kid himself, and hoped his brain would catch up before the thief had time to--  
  
"Oh, you must be the detectives that Conan-kun tells me about," Kid trilled, turning in his seat to face the pair and smile winningly up at them.  "He told me how he gets to help you on your cases, that must be so amazing, Mama never lets me help her like that, and she doesn't have anything to do with dead bodies.  That's what your work is, right?  Dead bodies?" With a blink and a flutter of his heavily made-up eyelashes, one finger twirling the long ponytails of his wig, 'Akaru-chan' waited expectantly for salacious details from both detectives, ignoring - or seeming to ignore - the covert kick that 'Conan-kun' delivered to his stocking-clad knee under the table.  
  
Sato took in the appearance, attitude, apparent age and overall  _pinkness_  of 'Akaru-chan' and visibly backpedaled, attempting to fit her in somewhere among the Conan-shaped bits of information filed away in her head. It wasn't working.  Behind her, Takagi seemed to be slightly dazed.  "Dead... bodies, yes.  Live ones too, um.  Right.  Miss--?"  
  
"Tsukiyoshi Akaru," put in Conan, smiling up at both detectives (or at least showing his teeth.)  "She's a, a, a-- family friend!"  The smile took on fixed, slightly desperate qualities.  "Our mothers know each other and tomorrow I'm, uh, heading out with my parents so we.  We, uh.  We..."  Smile still in place, he cast around for a moment and then took off in a more promising direction: attack, rather than defense.  "Sato-san, you look very nice; you two're out on a date, ne?"  
  
While Takagi burbled his way into redfaced incoherency ("Tha-tha-that's, ah, ehm, well--"), Sato smiled, halfway between tenseness and amusement, and nodded.  "Just like you two, I suppose!  Are you having a good time?"  Turnabout, apparently, did not work so much on her.  
  
"Uh.  Yes?" answered Conan cautiously before his brain quite caught up with the word 'date', which bludgeoned said brain, tied it up and locked it in a closet somewhere... much like Takagi's reaction, actually.  He looked up at the blushing officer, and the two shared a moment of mutual male incoherency while Sato raised an eyebrow at 'Akaru-chan', still smiling.  
  
"That's nice to hear.  We'll leave you to your dinner, then.  Have a good time with your parents, Conan-kun."  Linking her arm in Takagi's, the young woman drew him along towards where the hostess waited beside a rather intimate table a few meters away.  Takagi gave the 'children' slightly disbelieving looks as he passed, but Conan's cover story was apparently reasonable enough.  
  
From beneath the table, a second kick headed ankle-wards.  "So, about those two?" muttered Shinichi, his fixed smile still in place.  "You remember how I said that there were a few people who probably know something's fi-- ah, not quite right about 'Conan'?  Takagi's number one on the list."  He took a long drink of his water, sitting back with a sigh.  
  
"Well, we can't fault his accuracy."  Kid smiled angelically, wrapping his perfectly-painted and glass-glossy lips around the tip of his straw and sucking.  "But," and Akaru-chan's mannerisms played out in silent clashing contrast to Kid's quiet, confidential tones as he continued, "It doesn't take an extraordinary detective to know that you're substantially tweaked, chibitantei.  Are we sure that Takagi-keiji deserves his badge?"  
   
The waiter arrived with their respective chicken dishes just then, so the response was slightly delayed.  Napkin tucked into place, Shinichi tested a bite of his ornately-arranged dinner and chewed appreciatively.  "It's not his intelligence that I'm crediting, though he's a very bright officer; it's his ability to use his imagination and to have an open mind that's impressive.  It's not like he's the only person who's ever thought that I was 'substantially tweaked', and look who's talking... he's just one of the few who didn't toss the observation off as just 'hey, weird kid' and leave it at that."  He took another bite.  "How's your dinner?"  
  
"The quality of a meal is always defined by its company," Kid purred, delicately twisting small sections of linguini into little knots perfectly sized for the dainty mannerisms of a little girl trying to impress her date.  "So in this case, the linguini is  _delectable._ "  
  
There went his brain again, sort of a mental '.......' thing.  Shinichi tried for a response; what would Holmes do in this situation?  
  
 _He'd come up with a suitable compliment in return and then he'd eat his chicken._  Which, come to think of it, gave him an appropriate response.  "Likewise; 'I trust that age will not wither, nor custom stale my infinite variety,'" he quoted, thanking the  _Adventure Of The Empty House_  for the save.  "Though really, that ought to apply to you more than me."  With a little grin he dug into the chicken in earnest.  
  
'Date.'  This was a celebratory dinner, wasn't it?  Which explained why the word made his ears burn all over again, just the thought of it.  With any luck that had gone unnoticed-- oh, who was he kidding?  Of  _course_  the thief would've caught the momentary blush, and that's all it was, just a bit of embarrassment.  Perfectly natural.  
  
Shinichi stole a glance across the table.  For such a 'delicate girl', Akaru-chan was tucking in at a pretty good rate.  
  
Kid found his shoulders and posture relaxing as silence substituted for conversation while they ate.  The food really was quite good, if horribly inauthentic; then again, not everyone could say they'd dined in Turin and Bologna.  A small smile curved the Kid's lips at that thought - that really had been a good memory, and a good heist.  But it'd been a while since he'd taken any big international trips like the Italy trip had been.  Recently, he'd been keeping much closer to home, as though something had encouraged his reluctant roots to grow.  
  
He hid a glance across the table in his reach for the grated romano shaker.  "Something," indeed.  
  
The waiter came and went, bringing more breadsticks, fawning over the "little gentleman and lady," and Kid encouraged him, laying on all the charm that 'Akaru-chan' was worth.  He caught Shinichi surreptitiously rolling his eyes at one particularly wheedling request for a free refill of her drink - which, to the waiter's credit, he declined - and hid a snicker of his own at seeing it.  Chibitantei really was adorable when he was forgetting to act stupid and cute.  
  
Unfortunately, it was too good to last.  As they reached the halfway point of their meal, Kid brought his head up with sudden alertness, glancing past Shinichi's head toward the back of the restaurant.  "I doubt that you have ever had legitimate concern over a lack of variety in your life, Tantei, but just for once I would wish that you had somewhat of a bit  _more_  than you apparently do.  Finish what you desire of your meal within the next minute or so; I believe we have that long until someone screams."  
   
 _...what?_   Caught in mid-bite, Shinichi stared.  "Screams.  Screams?  Why?"  The meal was tasty, the company was excellent, he'd been having a good time; why would anybody want to scream?  --okay, change that: why did anybody  _usually_  scream in his near vicinity?   
   
 _Well,_ _ **shit.**_     
  
Waiting for the other shoe to fall, Shinichi chewed and swallowed as quickly as possible.  "Who's dead?  And how do you know?" he asked with a sinking feeling, senses that had been lulled into relaxation shaking themselves awake and alert.  Dammit, he'd been enjoying himself.  
  
"I don't know who.  I'm a thief, not a psychic."  Kid's tone was dry and clipped, clearly as pissed off as Shinichi was that their little date was about to come to a screeching - literally - halt.  "And it's the scent.  Still faint.  Think it's coming from the kitchen."  He paused, the shadow of a frown flickering behind the mask of his Poker Face.  
  
"Takagi-keiji and Sato-keiji are here," Kid murmured, even as he sat up straighter, posture guarded.  "They're quite competent.  You could let them take care of this."  
   
Shinichi shook his head, a barely perceptible movement.  "Can't.  Wouldn't if I could; murders-- somebody's  _dead,_  not just hurt or unhappy: somebody's son, daughter, brother, mother... father.  You see?"  He looked as if the words simultaneously hurt and angered him, and by the sharp regret in his eyes he knew what they almost certainly caused Kid as well.  "The most vulnerable moment for a killer is directly after they kill, that's when they're least confident and most likely to be caught."  He took one more bite of chicken onto his fork, stared at it, sighed and put it back down.  "This is what I  **do.**   And murderers, uncaught ones, they kill again pretty often.  If you saw one of the assassins you told me about aiming into the crowd, what would you do?"  The detective shook his head.  "Don't answer that; you'd try to stop it too.  So--"  He spread his hands, a very unchildlike expression making Shinichi's eyes darken with something much more bitter than personal annoyance.  
   
He wasn't perfect, after all.  There'd been cases in the past that he hadn't solved, and somewhere out there were killers that, if he'd been smarter or more observant or somebody that the authorities had been more willing to listen to, would now be behind bars. "This," Shinichi said very, very quietly, "is  _my_  version of 'nobody gets hurt.'  Only, for me, it's 'nobody gets away.'"  
   
And that moment, of course, was when the scream came: a full-throated female shriek from through the divided kitchen doors.  At their table, Sato and Takagi's heads whipped up simultaneously.  And Edogawa Conan was already moving.  
   
Kaitou Kid was also moving, though very few in the restaurant cared.  In the guise of Akaru-chan, he flitted his way toward the exit, dismissably squawking and sobbing where appropriate, or whenever someone else got too close to him.  Out the front door of the restaurant and away down the street, "Akaru-chan" made a very visible exit, though one that wasn't going to be important in anything except retrospect.  
  
 _Sorry, chibitantei, I can't help you out this time.  I know you don't need my help anyway, but...  
  
...but you should know that I would have offered it if I could._  
  
Six blocks away from Italiano-sama Bistro, "Akaru-chan" disappeared, Kuroba Kaito took her place, and the pace of retreat speeded considerably.  Breathing steadied, though thoughts ran quick, sharp rapping impacts chasing one another to a half dozen conclusions.  The path to the Kuroba mansion was simple enough from here on; the teenage magician and his larceny-inclined companion had plenty of time to confer with each other on the way there.  
  
*  
  
Detectives Takagi and Sato crowded up to the kitchen door before most of the more voyeristically-inclined patrons in the restaurant had a chance to clog the entrance.  While Sato boomed out orders for the patrons to disperse and clear the kitchen area, Takagi examined the kitchen from its doorway, establishing the scene in his mind and determining whether it was safe for himself and Sato to enter.  
  
Item: one kitchen (large) with a shelved counter along one side of the huge room containing sinks, dishes, pots and pans, et cetera; a central island counter easily four meters long with water sources, chopping-blocks, mixing equipment and a terrifyingly huge ceiling-hung rack of assorted utensils; a third counter on the near wall with the ovens, burners, processors, steamers and so forth.  
  
Item: one dead body, female, slumped part-way into an enormous pot.  The woman's face was not visible, but what little hair could be seen beneath the white cloth hat was a deep chestnut; caucasian from the skin-tone, and reportedly the restaurant's top chef.  Gruesomely, her smock had somehow snagged onto the handles of the enormous pot, keeping her body from sliding down to the floor and basically fixing her in a pose that made her seem to be embracing the huge container of cooking pasta.  
  
It wasn't likely that anybody'd want to eat it, though, thought Takagi, considering the color of the boiled-over foam.  That'd be the results of the cleaver buried deeply in the woman's skull, right through her chef's hat.  
  
"'There is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible,'" murmured a voice at Takagi's side; It sounded like a quote.  With very little surprise he glanced down at the top of Edogawa Conan's head.  
  
"Shakespeare?" he asked.  
  
"Arthur Conan Doyle.  _The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge,_ " answered the boy.  "Where's the other cook?"  Takagi obligingly moved aside a step or two to allow the most unofficial civillian contact of the TMDP to view the shaken man, seated on a chair by the open back door.  Heavyset and obviously upset, the balding cook had a palm-sized graze above his left temple.  Over to one side by the sinks, a hysterical young woman was sobbing against a coworker's shoulder.  Takagi indicated her with a hitch of one shoulder.  
  
"She went into the store-room for some supplies, was gone maybe ten minutes, came back out to find the door wide open and Okino-san staggering through with his head bleeding.  His wife was... in the pasta."  Beyond them, Sata gave a sharp glance back, saw Conan and visibly sighed before going on with her efforts at controlling the scene of the crime.  "From what Okino-san said, he was taking out the trash when he was struck and knocked to the ground."  
  
"Really, Takagi-san?  That's funny."  
  
 _And there it is, there we go._   Takagi Wataru had a few pet theories of his own about the diminutive detective, but none of them were all that relevant right now; whatwas relevant was that he had a new time to add to the chalkboard at work... what, maybe four minutes max from That Kid Sees The Corpse to That Kid Does The Voice Thing Again?  No more than five, definitely.  "You mean how the graze is on the front of his head and not the back?"  
  
"No, I was wondering why his clothes are dry and clean if he got knocked down.  It's been raining most've the day and it's muddy out there-- look, there's mud on his shoes."  
  
Takagi gave Sato a Look; snapping her cellphone shut (there was a squadcar and an ambulance on the way by now, he knew), she left the hostess and the head waiter to handle the crowd.  "Fancy seeing you back here, Conan-kun," she said dryly.  "Well?"  
  
He beamed up at her, glasses reflecting the overhead lighting.  "Well what, Sato-san?"  That earned him a good hard stare, but he gave it back wattage for wattage before glancing over one shoulder towards the rotund waiter, who was sweating bullets.  "He looks upset."  
  
"He should.  He was having an aff..." The word 'affair' trailed off as Sato paused; Takagi nodded briefly.  "Right.  You talk to him, I'll take Okino-san."  
  
"Ahh-- you have your spare cuffs on you, don't you?"  Takagi eyed the victim's heavyset husband, who was looking more and more frightened every second.  "He looks like a runner."  
  
Sato patted her pocket.  "Always," she murmured, and the two traded a little smile between them.  Clearing her throat, she glanced down at the boy.  "Want to come along, Conan-kun?"  
  
He had been looking at the corpse, not her; and for a second his face held an anger and sadness that did not belong where it lived... but only for a second, no more.  "Sure, Sato-san."  He glanced behind himself once more, only this time not at the staff but at the crowd, searching the faces there for-- someone.  Small shoulders slumped; Conan shrugged, and followed her towards the nervous man by the door.  
  
* * *  
  
Though it felt like it should have, the Kudo mansion front door did not screech as it opened on the darkened foyer and front hall.  Only moonlight and starlight, and a bit of disparate reflected glare from streetlights, cast shadows in the hollow space.  Shinichi proceeded into it with comparatively little caution.  "Hello?  Where are you?"   
  
Silence and darkness.  
  
Shinichi knelt slowly, tapping the side of his shoe to rev up its kicking mechanism, and proceeded further into the house with caution, slowly working his way to the library doors, which stood half-open.  A silent nudge on one of them opened it wide, revealing the Kaitou Kid.  
  
Well. Probably.  
  
The man in the library - perching on the couch opposite Shinichi's favorite chair - was, by the light of a tiny book lamp, fully absorbed in scrubbing his face with a rag that even from the doorway Shinichi could tell was soaked in rubbing alcohol.  His hair was a ruffled mess, the underlayers dark and black in the low light; the upper layers shining with a gloss that indicated heavy use of hair product.  His clothing was nondescript, a salaryman's third-best (if that) suit, and didn't appear to fit him very well; but when Shinichi noticed the stack of curved heavy foam padding that had been leaned against the couch's leg, the whole puzzle clicked into place, accompanied by a jolt of surprisingly reassuring irritation.  
  
"You  _were_  there!" Shinichi accused the Kid, tapping his toe three times to turn off the kicker mechanism.  In the sudden silence after it shut down, he crossed the room to stand beside Kid, arms crossed, frowning.  "You didn't even give me a [tell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_%28poker%29) to clue me in, or anything."  
  
"Last I checked, neither of us really welcomes distractions when we're on the job, chibitantei," Kid countered prissily, face obscured by a washcloth.  When he brought it down, though, the playful twinkle in his eyes was as good as an exclamation:  
  
 _Good to see you too.  Glad it went well._  
  
 _Likewise, and I'm glad you were there,_  said the answering grin.  It sobered after a second, though.  "Good thing they took Okino-san in, though; did you hear him raving about what he wanted to do to the waiter?  Lye in his coffee."  The detective shuddered, kicking off the now-dormant sneakers and hitching himself up into his favorite chair.  "Probably would've done it, too; he wasn't too tightly wrapped."  He sighed, hooking one toe onto the chair opposite; his socks were slightly grimy, one knee of his jeans seemed to be developing a hole, and if you discounted the voice and expression he looked the complete seven-year-old urchin.  
  
Shinichi rubbed at his eyes, weary but satisfied.  "Sorry we had to cut things short, though; oh yeah, and Sato-san said to say hi to 'Akaru-chan' when I saw her again."  One dark blue eye emerged from between his fingers, tired but full of amusement.  "I think she's fascinated.  I mean, all that  _pink."_  
  
Kid positively  _sparkled,_ , his expression gleefully troublesome.  "Tell her that she's welcome to borrow Akaru-chan's glitter powder puff, if she wanted to; she had such a pretty black dress, but it would have been so nice to add a little bit of shine along her curves to accentuate her, heh, assets."  
   
"Yeah?  You want Takagi's head to explode?"  Shinichi made blowing-up motions with both hands, scooting around in the chair until he could rest his head against one arm.  "Did you  _see_  his face when she took that little jacket off?  No grown man ought to blush like that."  The 'pretty black dress' had indeed been complimented with a soft velvet jacket; it had been appropriate in the cooler restaurant, but the officer had removed it in the warmth of the kitchen... and the dress, backless for a long, long ways down, had been fastened across with three very thin matching velvet ribbons, complete with tiny bows and long, pullable tails.  Even little Conan had gone a bit crosseyed at that.  
  
 _Lucky Takagi.  Hope he's good with knots._  
  
Kid chuckled, dropping the remnants of his latex and silicone facial prosthetics - which, too hastily applied, hadn't survived the subsequent removal, and wouldn't be any good for another use - on the low coffee table in front of their chairs.  He kicked his heels up beside them, leaning back against the voluptuously plush cushions with an audible crackle from his spine.  "Ooogh.  If I make sure to be a good little kaitou and not make Takagi-keiji's head explode, will you be a good little tantei and acquire me a chiropractor who won't ask questions?  Ugh."  He rolled one shoulder, then the other, wincing, before cracking one blue eye open and fixing his companion with a pained, wry glance.  "I hate playing slouching roles, but they're so  _useful_..."  
  
Shinichi winced at the pops and cracks; that had to hurt.  An idea presented itself, was very nearly abandoned, then nudged its way back to the forefront.  Glancing down at his damnably small hands, he hesitated...  _A friend would offer, right?  And I_ _used_ _to do this for Kasaan._   "I, ah--  It's not like I've got the weight or strength to do much good, but I used to work on my Kasaan's neck when I was small the first time around," Shinichi offered more than a little hesitantly.  
  
It was rather like offering to take a thorn from a lion's paw, if the lion was a certifiably insane thief with a large chunk of perfectly reasonable paranoia; if the lion refused the offer, well... it was understandable.  
  
Kid, to his credit, seriously considered the offer.  With a fair amount of wariness, he weighed how much good Shinichi could actually do ( _any_  improvement would be worthwhile! moaned his knotted muscles) against how likely it was that he could make it through a prolonged, unguarded contact like that without snapping.  And tempered that concern with serious consideration of how much care Shinichi might need after the fact, if Kid wasn't able to hold his fight-or-flight instincts in check.  
  
In the end, he extended one hand, palm up, fingers loosely spread.  It was not his most confident gesture, but he didn't withdraw it.  
  
"See what you can do for this," he offered, as hesitant as Shinichi had been in volunteering.  "Sometimes when I don't have anyone to help I'll massage my hand and my wrist, and it.  Well, sometimes it helps smooth things out anyway, but it's kind of counterproductive to do it myself because it just knots up the other arm worse, so."  He somewhat stumbled to a halt, studying his hand, then glancing briefly to Shinichi's face.  "Anyway, it might... If you're willing to try, it might do a little good."  
  
So the lion was offering his paw?  Shinichi bit back a laugh, nodded carefully, and proceeded to move his chair closer to the couch.  "My Kasan used to paint as a hobby," he said conversationally, "so I do actually know a little about this.  Relax as much as possible, will you? I'm not going to bite your fingers off."  His own hands looked stupidly small against Kid's long, thin ones; the thief had a remarkably strong, narrow-boned palm and wrist, tendons corded but not even slightly bulky.  Had this been a crime scene, thought Shinichi as he gently stretched the thumb out and allowed it to pop, he'd place Kid's occupation in the area of the Fine Arts, possibly music or paint media. The calluses'd be wrong, of course; and a lack of pigment or ink-stains would also prove puzzling.  The thumb popped, a tiny sound; and he went to work on the next digit.  
  
One at a time, slowly and carefully; Kid's skin was dry and flexible, faint rougher patches here and there across the back from the burns he'd received.  As the last finger popped, Shinichi glanced up at the other, who'd sat silent during his work.  No protests so far, so he began to work on the muscles that began between the knuckles and slanted down to tangle in the wristbones.  Deliberate focus, as sharp and intent as any investigation he'd ever done; his small fingertips dug deeply between tendon and joint.  Shinichi hoped it was helping.  
  
 _This is way past weird and into surreal.  But what the hell, why not?  Fine, brain, I acknowledge that I'm giving a wanted criminal a hand massage.  Move along, please, nothing to see here._  
  
Nothing to see?  That was fortunate.  Kid had his eyes closed  _tight._  
  
He'd made the mistake of watching Shinichi's hands as they worked over his own, two tiny ones to his big one, and had been distantly amused by the image, until he looked up and saw the focus with which the detective was approaching the task, blue eyes inky in the shallow, faint lighting of the dark library, brow drawn down in an expression of concentration singular to the equally singular boy...  
  
...turned  _off_  the chill, professional distance between himself and the help that Shinichi was offering...  
  
...and found himself settling quite cosily into the lap of Trouble with a capital T.  
  
 _He sees me._  The phrase rattled around in Kid's head like a loose marble.  More than one loose marble, probably.   _He sees me.  Not Kaito--_  
  
Internally, the magician nodded at the thief, noting the differentiation without insult, and Kid acknowledged him in return as his thoughts continued their slow ricochet.  
  
 _\--not Kuroba, not Kaitou Kid, just...Kid._   That realization, while somewhat monumental, paled next to its attendant fact, which was:  
  
 _He sees someone that I didn't know I could be.  Didn't know that I_ _was_ _._  
  
Kid glanced up again, just in time to catch Shinichi's eye as the detective looked up as well, checking to make sure the thief's silence wasn't negative.  Kid held the gaze, not because he particularly wanted to but because he couldn't let himself look away first, but when Shinichi glanced back down again - apparently not seeing much out of the ordinary beyond the  _entire_  fucking situation, which, okay, Kid could grant him that one and all its cousins too - Kid looked away too, squeezing his eyes shut again.  Other than that, his Poker Face - and absolutely nothing else - stood unshaken between himself and the detective.  
  
There were tiny nicks here and there oround the outer edges of Kid's hand below the smallest finger; as Shinichi worked his way across, he wondered when the thief'd had to shield himself from broken glass.  _More like 'how many times' has he had to do that, really._   There, last knuckle-joint done.  Now, what came next?  Right; he turned the other's hand over and began to work the strong pad of muscle at the base of the thumb with both of his.  
  
 _Hello, surreal; nice meeting you, see you later._   What came after that?  Shinichi wondered about this briefly, but most of his mind was caught up in the task at-- well, at hand.  It was so strange, actually touching another human being like this; Ran'd hold hands occasionally, Neechan looking out for her young charge, but this was...  He shied away from what precisely it was and concentrated on his work and only on that, focused on the moment and the sensation of touch.  
  
More scars, thin white traceries, always in straight lines... maybe from the cardgun's ammo?  The thin fingers twitched slightly, tensed as Shinichi moved his touch up further to the pressure-points just beneath where each digit began.  The center of the palm, then; he'd moved in a spiral from the base of the thumb through the hand's left side and across, and now steadied the thief's hand with one of his own while he massaged with the other.  
  
It was oddly intense, welcome but disquieting; relaxing for Kid, he hoped, but for him...  Shinichi shied away again, and then wondered just what he was stressing about.  Other people did this for their friends, family, et cetera.  Right?  And to touch another human being-- so he was unaccustomed to it, had been for a long time, really.  Even in his old life, how often had he done more than brush his fingers against Ran's?  
  
And now he was--  _Okay,_  he told himself firmly even as he began working each finger from base to tip,  _Not going there._    
  
( _Why not?_  a very small voice asked from somewhere in the back of his head.  It sounded oddly like Kid's.  _You're so good with motivation and the reason behind actions, maybe you ought to pay attention to your own?_ )  
  
Last finger.  Shoving the voice back and away, he finished massaging the oddly-callused tip and let go, allowing his own tired hands to rest on either side of the thief's.   "There," Shinichi murmured.  "I haven't done that in a long time; did it help?"  He flexed his own; they tingled, wrists to nails.  
  
Before he could really double-think the action, Kid flipped his hand over, wrapping it gently but encompassingly over both of Shinichi's hands.  The grasp was imperfect; only half of Shinichi's fingers ended up covered by Kid's, and those unevenly taken from each hand.  But the warmth of his palm, hot with blood flowing in clear and pain-free circulation, was insistent against Shinichi's skin.  
  
"...Don't move away," Kid finally managed, after an uncomfortably long silence in which he searched for the words to explain.  "It's just - it's warm."  
  
'Warm.'  That was the best word that Kid had for it, the tingling and comforting warm slide of someone's skin - more than that, someone's skin which...which  _cared_ about him.  Though rarely, Kuroba Kaito had felt that sensation before, when childish lack of inhibition allowed him to embrace Aoko closely; when his mother or his father used to touch his shoulders, or give him a rare embrace, with hands that bore their love in every crease and callus.  
  
Kid's father, the first Kaitou Kid, had felt that touch as well, in his wife's caress.  Kuroba's father had felt the loving embrace of his son.   
  
But this Kaitou Kid, 1412 the younger, Kid (just Kid)... never had.  
  
 _Warm._  
  
The word was a sentence on its own.  And, curiously, Kid had said it as if he expected (as if he  _knew_ ) that Shinichi would understand the meaning.  The boy, almost dumfounded, remained in the same position he'd been in at the end of the massage, leaning forward towards the couch with his elbows and forearms resting on the couch's arm.   _Warm._   Heat from the palm and fingers baked into his own, and it was shockingly, suddenly, the realest thing in the room-- as if the entire evening had been fuzzily comfortable but not quite clear...  
  
...until then.   _Warm.  And it feels_ _good_ _._  
  
Which, of course, made it the precise moment for Shinichi's cellphone to go off like a bomb.  
  
Kid jumped.  One moment, he lay sprawled exhaustedly on the couch, his hand gently gripping both of Shinichi's like lifelines; the next, as the cellphone's ringer twinkled out its cutesy melody, screechingly loud in the dark and silence of the library, Kid was abruptly three feet away, crouched on the back rail and arm of the couch like the edge of a rooftop.  His guard and Poker Face had come back up so quickly that it gave  _him_  whiplash, to say nothing of the impression it must have made on Shinichi; but Kid wasn't thinking about that at the moment, he was quite busy enough trying to get his heart back under control, calm his paranoia to a reasonable level, and somehow make the little voice in the back of his head, the one that nit-picked and criticised  _everything_  he did because it wasn't good enough, to _shut the hell up,_  Benten and broken mirrors curse it thrice.  
  
And, even as he fought to  _consciously_  relax the panicked dilation of his pupils, he was most angry, unreasonably so, at his left hand, which had suddenly become very cold.  
  
 _.....calm down calm down just the phone calm down....._   Shinichi was having problems of his own, which at the moment seemed to include a remarkably strong if inexplicable urge to grab Kid's hand back and to throw his phone out the nearest window, open or not.  Heart hammering in his ears, he hit the detestable thing with a fist (fortunately not very hard) where it resided in his pocket and then fished it out.   
  
"Uh.  Text from Agasa," he said to the thief perched on the back of his couch like a terrified raptor; "That's all.  Just a text.  Kid?  Are you okay?"  His voice shook; why was his voice shaking?  
  
Kid slowly swiveled his hyperfocused gaze around to Shinichi, sweeping the room with a more than cursory glance, as though he really did expect the shadows to breed demons.  "I'm fine," he murmured, the chill distance of Poker Face a thick wall of ice between himself and Shinichi.  "I need to go."  He heard himself, heard the vibrant shake in Shinichi's voice; had enough presence of mind to push himself into a small risk, a finger's-width hole melting through the ice to bridge the distance between their vulnerabilities.  
  
"Thank you," he managed.  "And good luck.  I'll keep warm.  Till you can fix my other hand."  
  
It was one gesture, a tiny one, but all that he could manage at the moment.  
  
As for Shinichi... it was a weird thing, but after all the Sherlock Holmes quotes of the evening, another one snuck up from nowhere into his head just then.  It was anything but a Doyle quote, but it fit the moment all too well:  _'He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.'_   Wondering vaguely what C.S. Lewis would have thought of the moment, Shinichi nodded quietly.  "Thanks, and... I will.  You too.  I'll let you know how things're going-- should have my laptop, I guess."  He glanced down at the cellphone still in his hands, not wanting to see how Kid left.  "And thanks for the evening; it was really good."  
  
Kid smiled, a flicker of his normal self peeking through the shuttered blinds.  "You're welcome."  A moment later, the rush of cloth and tap of shoes told Shinichi that Kid was moving, but he didn't look up.  As a cold evening breeze rushed suddenly across his face - an open window - Kid's voice drifted back to him.  
  
"Make sure you call me while your voice is cracking so I can mimic you."  A laugh - a little forced, a little genuine - and the thief was gone.  
  
 _Warm._  
  
* * *

 


	11. "Waiting, alcohol, red sweater"

_**(Soundtrack: "Into The Fire", Thirteen Senses)**_  
 _Warning:  extreme waff ahead_

  
 _Clinical Trial: a rigorously controlled test of a new drug or a new invasive medical device on human subjects._  
  
There's not a lot that can be said about prepping for a medical procedure that doesn't sound alarming. There are the needles and the IV stands and the fat, glossy bags of chemicals that will soon be in your veins; there's the really alarming amount of charts and schedules; and there's the bed. The bed is what the patient pays the most attention to, because that's where they're going to be-- all the rest is somebody else's business.  
  
As this was the very first clinically-controlled transformation (at least outside of the Black Organization's clutches) it was being approached with a good deal of caution and, on Haibara Ai's part at least, anticipation. One of Agasa's small bedrooms in the back corner of his manse had been equipped for Shinichi's stay; it was close enough to the labs to be safe but still private, and there was a window to cut down on any incipient claustrophobia.  
  
And the bed was comfortable; Shinichi'd tested it. He'd brought a stack of books, too.  
  
Day One started, from his perspective, by inserting far too many bits of sharpened steel into far too much of his anatomy. Various nutrients were force-fed via IV into his system plus some sort of elaborate preparatory drug regime, and he developed one hell of a headache due to an overly-enthusiastic drip. "So when will you start the antidote?" Shinichi asked Ai as she adjusted the flow; he rubbed his own temples with both thumbs, a fleeting ghost of the previous night's hand-massage flickering through his muscles.  
  
"Tonight, around sunset," she responded matter-of-factly, tugging a feed-line straight. "You'll be informed, though I imagine you'd notice the effects fairly rapidly." With those encouraging words she left, leaving both he and the Professor behind.  
  
"She  _does_  mean well, you know, Shinichi." Agasa moved around the room, examining the placements of the three IVs in Shinichi's arms. "She's just..."  
  
"I know, I know." Irritably he smoothed down the corner of a bit of tape; it had rolled up and kept snagging against his sleeve. Shinichi had not acceded to Ai's suggestion that he wear a hospital gown; an oversized yukata worked just fine for him, thank you very much-- less flappage. "She's just treating it like another experiment and treating  _me_  like a Guinea Pig. You'd almost think she didn't care about the outcome." He glanced up at the Professor questioningly. "Doesn't she? Or is there something you'd like to tell me about? She  _does_  believe this'll work, doesn't she?"  
  
Agasa avoided his gaze. "Harrumph. She does. It's... I suppose you'd say it's the the 'long term effects' that she's worried about. You'll be fine, though, Shinichi," the elderly man hastened to add. "It has nothing to do with  _this_  transformation, it--" There was a faint  _beeeep!_  from beyond the room's open door, and Agasa stopped mid-sentence. "Mhmp; timer. Get some rest, Shinichi, and we'll talk later, hm?" He left the door open behind him.  
  
".......great." What was that saying? 'Some days it's just not worth gnawing through the straps'...? Sunset. And it wasn't even lunchtime. Bored and cranky, Shinichi wriggled the pillows into a more comfortable shape and reached for the first of his books.  
  
*  
  
Three hours, two books, several drugs and one liquid lunch later ("No solids and no caffeine. Perhaps you know the meaning of the word 'enema'? Good."), feeling queasy and distinctly odd around the edges, Shinichi scratched at the edge of the tape on his arm and sought distraction in the wilds of the Internet. Early afternoon sunlight laid bars of faint warmth across the sheets; the sky outside his window was mostly blocked by the stand of large pines that divided Agasa's place from his family's, but between the branches Shinichi could see the hazy Autumn overcast, palest blue freckled by birds flying south.  
  
Habit guided Shinichi to the chat site where he'd spent so much recent time. By this time, convenience had won out over paranoia, and '1nb!u' was listed in his Contacts, so it was a simple matter of clicking the thief's icon (uncustomised, still set to the default, gender-free grey silhouette icon) to take Shinichi to Kid's equally bare profile. Disappointingly, the little icon beside the thief's screenname was darkened - he wasn't online. Shinichi leaned back in his hospital bed, eyes closing, as he reminded himself that he shouldn't have been surprised.  _He's got his own things to do,_  the detective reasoned.  _And I didn't give him an exact timeline, either, so there's not much reason for him to be--_  
  
His laptop interrupted him, a cheerfully artificial chiming sound that he hadn't heard before. Poking around on the chat website, he discovered a feature he'd not previously used, which now drew his attention with a tiny graphic of an envelope which was waving its corners at him.  
  
 _1 new private mail!_  
  
Shinichi blinked. "Oh?" Clicking through, he was (almost) completely unsurprised by what he found.  
  
 _Detective,  
  
I can with some confidence 'hope that this finds you well,' as if you're still well enough - and restless enough - to be checking my profile, you're probably still well enough to read this PM. (Conditional events are really so very satisfying to program, though tricky.) I don't know how old you might be now, as it's been a while, perhaps long enough to seem like years, since we've talked. Funny what a difference a day makes. Just wanted to assure you that I got home alright, and that thanks to my newfound dexterity, picking the tumbler at the delightfully organized desk of Minister Sawa's secretary was made very much easier. You may be grateful to know that my skills are still at a premium - both in quality and in demand.  
  
Don't worry, you haven't missed - or abetted - anything fun. I was only practicing; I wouldn't schedule a performance without properly advertising it, of course.  
  
I feel that I have much else to say, but I don't know what it is, or where to start. I can't lie to you and pretend my words are all in order, which is new. Normally I'm quite the adept liar.  
  
-1nb!u_  
  
Shinichi groaned. "And I haven't aged at all yet, smartass," he informed the piece of mail. Ai had been taking his vital signs once per hour, and she'd informed him that lift-off was at 4:00 p.m., so to speak; not that she'd put it like that, of course. A bit earlier than planned.  
  
She'd also shown a little more empathy than usual, sitting down and rather bluntly informing him of how, where and when the pain would start and what kind of course it'd follow; Shinichi had quite a few unpleasant hours waiting for him. Knowing this, there wasn't much for him to do but lie there and watch the steady drip of the IVs, so-- yay, distractions. Distractions were good.  
  
Hitting the 'reply' key, he typed:  
  
 _1nb!u? You have no idea. Restless? More like bored to death. And just now you'd find me much as you left me, other than a few holes, bandaids and missing skin-samples. I'm told that this'll begin to change in a couple of hours and that it won't be pleasant, but all in the name of Science, right?  
  
I cannot believe you actually-- no, no, nevermind, I do believe you picked Minister Sawa's secretary's desk lock. If you ever need a second career, I understand locksmithing's highly profitable. Find anything interesting? _  
  
Shinichi shifted restlessly in the bed, adjusting the laptop as the cooling fans in its tray kicked on. A thought struck him, and after a second of considering he grinned.  
  
 _When you get this, contact me, will you? Might be feeling up to a game of cards if you're interested.  
  
Dductshn _  
  
* * *  
  
Kid needed a stiff drink.  
  
Well. He looked from the glass in his hand, a honey-golden slip of liquid still sliding around beneath the ice cubes, to the table beside his nightstand, where the decanter of alcohol stood waiting, still half-full of the same syrup-colored liquor.  
  
Revision: Kid needed  _another_  stiff drink.  
  
He had been at this for about an hour, and was wobbly by this point, but nowhere close enough to incoherency for his preferences, so another glassful of alcohol was carefully poured and savored. The decanter's glass cork slid back into place with a scraping hiss, and Kid turned his attention to the strong aromas lifting up from the glass in his hand. It was a good alcohol, a good year.  
  
Kid sighed and downed as much of it as he could without choking. The liquor burned his throat and nose, made him cough. It was a fine alcohol, of a quality that deserved better than being shotgunned as a chaser to the even more potent intoxication of the previous night. But Kid - ensconced in the relative safety of the Kuroba mansion, bundled up in warm, dumpy clothing, with one of his favorite black and white Hollywood films playing on the large flatscreen at the far end of the bedroom that he and Kuroba Kaito shared, a full dinner of comfort food still filling his belly - Kid really,  _really_  needed to be drunk.  
  
He had closed and shut down his computer after setting up the private message and its timer. Undoubtedly, Shinichi would have seen and replied to it by now, but Kid's computer was itself on a timer, a lockdown of twelve hours during which time he wouldn't be able to boot it up at all, much less browse to the chat site to see Shinichi's response. Twelve hours was a little short for what he had to do in that interim, but it would have to suffice. Kid was used to accomplishing things on a short timeline, so this task would be no exception.  
  
Kid frowned at his glass, then drained it by half; it burned going down and he coughed, one hand reflexively covering his heart as the alcohol spread through him.  
  
Gods, he was so fucked.  
  
No, that didn't even cover it by half. He was - he was -  
  
Kid curled up around a pillow, turning the volume of his movie up by a couple notches and burying his face and ears in his arms.   
  
He was completely out of his depth. And that scared him.  
  
What was he even supposed to  _call_  this relationship that they had, now? Camraderie? That implied they were on the same side of a fight, side by side. Only in the most sidewaysed manner could the Kaitou Kid and the chibitantei be said to be allies - officially, at least. If they were unofficial allies, then, that implied a cloak and dagger sort of subtext, a mission beneath the mission, which didn't work either: though they knew of each other's shared animosity toward the black-cloaked organizations which had ruined the lives they used to know, neither had been yet able to take a step toward actively aiding the other.  
  
Were they friends? As Shinichi and Kid, perhaps, but not as Edogawa Conan or Kaitou Kid. And who, besides the pair of them, knew that they  _existed_  as anything but their public faces? That thought in itself made the friendship between them even more strange, Kid feared. If the friendship could only exist inside the werelight of their secret peace, then was it only their secret peace that held the friendship together? Or was it the other way around?  
  
Kaitou Kid needed nothing of Edogawa Conan's cooperation or help. In fact, Kid needed none of Shinichi's, either. That was one thing - possibly the only thing - that _was_  certain, that their business was their pleasure, and taking it easy on each other was not only discouraged, but it was flat-out less fun.  
  
 _Is that what this is?_  Kid wondered, chasing the smoke tails of uncatchable logic through the twisted paths of his mind.  _Fun?_  It was one thing to solve a logic puzzle when one was sane and using the same logic that the puzzlebox itself used. It was entirely different to try to solve, with his own peculiar breed of insanity, the puzzlebox motivations of another man who was, just possibly, just as insane as the Kid himself, but in a different manner, a different strain of the unbalanced mental bug that drove the both of them to rooftop edges and windowledges.  
  
"You're as much two of a kind as either of you might ever find," Kuroba Kaito offered softly, nudging the movie volume up just a bit more, thoroughly covering their voices from listeners.  
  
Kid groaned.  _I know!_  And that - that was his problem. Had the Kaitou Kid ever had someone with whom he could claim kinship, save the spectre of his dead father? Had he ever had  _close_  contact with someone as peculiarly motivated as he himself was? Nakamori-keibu and Hakuba-san were professional rivals, men for whom he could perform. Their constant challenge to the Kaitou Kid goaded him to be ever better, ever more skilled, theatrical, and excellent; to make his appearances more grand and his escapes slicker and cleaner. But whether they would actually catch him? Kid hadn't been seriously concerned about that chance for quite some time. Maybe he was underestimating them. Maybe he was getting complacent. But despite those cautious concerns, he couldn't deny the facts: When it was only Nakamori-keibu and Hakuba-san chasing him, he didn't feel endangered.  
  
Kid sat up again, reached across to the decanter, and filled his glass up to the lip. Hands steady despite himself, he replaced the jug and drained a third of his glass before curling up again across his pillows, blanket pulled halfway across his legs, glass propped carefully between his hands.  
  
To be fair, he reminded himself, when the chibitantei was chasing him, he didn't precisely feel "endangered," either. But that was little comfort, really, because the better word - the more accurate description - was that he felt  _alive_.  
  
That would have been all well and good on its own, Kid brooded. If that was all that it was, he could have dealt with that, a fixation on one  _particular_  of his entourage, rather than the entire gaggle of officers, detectives, news media, fangirls...  
  
Kid downed the end of his glass, ice cubes cold against his lips as the alcohol sparked fire all through his throat and lungs. He had to pound himself on the chest that time, coughing and wincing. Kuroba wisely kept his mouth shut as he watched the thief cough, swallow, and settle back down.  
  
But he had stopped thinking of Edogawa  _as_  Edogawa a long time ago, had stopped seeing anything but Shinichi, and had also stopped thinking of Shinichi as a member of the Kaitou Kid's aggressive entourage at all. Shinichi just was...  
  
 _(his blue eyes flashing confident challenge or amusement; startled by glitter or cleavage; smirky as he fearlessly upped the ante to return Kid's challenge with interest; pained as he thought about loss.)_  
  
"Oh, Benten  _damn_  me thrice." Kid grabbed the decanter.  
  
* * *  
  
The clock beside Shinichi's bed said 6:37 now. And a different IV had replaced one of the earlier ones, the fluid inside a vivid scarlet.  _APTX 4873_  was written on the plastic, the end result of a number of laboratory experiments (and, Shinichi assumed, a number of lab rats, of which he was the most recent and the most human.) Apparently the versions between 4869 and the current hadn't worked all that well.  
  
Not that he cared; right now, he'd rather have nothing to do with any of them.  
  
The hospital bed in Agasa's back room was adjustable, but nothing really helped much, no matter how he changed his position; bathed in sweat, Shinichi turned restlessly onto one side and kicked at the covers. He was so  _hot_ ; burning with what felt like fever, scalding beneath the skin-- even his eyes felt hot. His joints felt inflamed and swollen; raising his left hand in front of his eyes, the boy ran the fingers of his right hand across knuckles and wrist--  
  
(Kid's hand, long-fingered and strong, tendons tight with stress as he worked muscle and sinew beginning with the back)  
  
\--Shinichi blinked, and then blinked again; what had  _that_  been all about? He shuddered as the pain crept across the digits, lighting tiny fires in the second joints. It was easy to picture them as tiny LEDs coming to life, red and white and shining through the skin.  _Hallucinating,_  he thought hazily.  _Ai said I would._  He hadn't heard back from the thief, not by email or by any other method. But he could almost hear the other's voice, laughing or careful by turns:  _It doesn't take an extraordinary detective to know that you're substantially tweaked, chibitantei._  
  
Shinichi'd tucked the tiny charms he'd been given into his wallet; it sat on the bedside table, clovers and coral bells hidden away safely.  
  
He turned again, careful even in his pain not to pull the IVs loose; they dangled beside the bed like swollen, glutinous gargoyles, monitors beeping softly, keeping time as glucose and... other things... dripped into his system. Shinichi's eyes, filmy with heat, fixed on the red bag; it looked malevolent somehow.  _But it's supposed to be my cure, isn't it? Not now but someday/soon/later, right? Soon. Please, let it be soon._  
  
He slept. Woke again full of sharp, shooting pains, slept again as the hours ticked by. Midnight to two a.m., Ai had said: that'd be when the worst of it happened.  
  
10:02 p.m. said the clock, the numbers as red as Apotoxin. Ai came in then-- or had she already been in the room? Shinichi was losing track. She took his pulse, small cool fingers like ice against his wrist. Calm eyes watched him from a face that had already seen more than its share of life and death (was that why she was so calm?) as she withdrew a blood sample from the temporary catheter lodged in his right inner elbow. Ai's hand rested gently on his brow for a second; she said something but Shinichi blinked stupidly at her, unable to understand the words. His heart beat in his ears, muffling everything, making her voice sound submerged and echoing. At that she shook her head and pulled a syringe from one pocket, injecting the contents into one of his IV lines before leaving the room.  
  
He must have dozed again; what woke him later was  pain, horrible and insistent and inevitable, and Shinichi became conscious with the sound of his own cry ringing in his ears. Agasa and Ai were both there, both talking; he could make nothing of it, all that existed was the wrenching agony that scraped like jagged, rusty metal across joint and muscle and nerve. Another syringe, and then there were hands holding him down and Agasa, speaking rapidly and soothingly... The words were impossible to understand over the roaring in his ears, but Shinichi tried to hold still.  
  
If only he wasn't so hot, God, so  _ **hot--**_  
  
His heartbeats sounded like glass breaking, every one; twisting, writhing, Shinichi reached past the heat, past the pain, past the agony and the flames that were eating him alive ( _stop it stop it make it stop please STOP)_  and fell down into the dark.  
  
..... _(thumb and forefinger and middle finger, ring-finger and pinky, Kid's hands working his own aching one. Kid's hands were warm, on fire without burning; his were coldcoldcold toosmall tooweak, but they were all he had. Wrist and palm and arch, the lines had words written in them (didn't they?) and Kid read them off as he worked ten years out, gone in a flash of heat. Tiny scars, white lines where the glass had cut, only it wasn't glass was it no he had scars for every lie he'd told, coldcoldcold. Ran was supposed to (would) understand but she wasn't (Ran please) wasn't (please, where) wasn't and Kid was Kid was there  
was there  
(warm)  
and he  
wasn't  
so cold  
anymore.)_  
  
Shinichi slept. Beside his bed, Haibara Ai and Professor Agasa watched as the last tremors subsided and his breathing evened out. With a strange gentleness, Ai straightened the crumpled yukata over his chest, smoothing the folds into place before stepping back. "Call me in an hour. You'll need to sleep as well." They'd been trading off monitoring the experiment, neither one willing to leave the figure on the bed alone for long.  
  
The time was 2:47 a.m.  
  
* * *  
  
 _Well._  Kid sleepily observed his glass decanter - now no more than a third full.  _That should do it._  Attempting to sit up proved his theory: he was well and truly drunk. The alcoholic buzz tingled through every inch of his skin, oversensitive and numb at the same time. A paradox, not that he was unused to those.  
  
He'd slept, drunk, slept, and drunk some more. Watched his movie, and understood none of it; dreamed, and understood too much. Now, completely inebriated, he lay in bed, tucked deep under the covers, and through the throbbing in his temples, tried not to think about the previous night.  
  
The thing was, Shinchi was the sort of person to take complete, overwhelming control of any situation that he found himself in. So, presented with a seven-year-old's body, he had done more than to 'make the best of it;' the irritating little chibitantei had made his size an  _asset,_  using his ability to go unnoticed and to be underestimated to camouflage his incisive critical mind. Presented with a lack of physical strength, he had used technology and creativity to make of himself just as much of a threat - perhaps more, really - than he had ever been as a teenager, if the stories Kid had overheard at the precinct and elsewhere were to be believed. The long and short of it (heh) was simply that Shinichi was a very commanding presence, at any size. Was that justification for the confusion he caused? Perhaps.  
  
Kid rolled over, rubbing at his eyes with his fists, and tried not to grumble in frustration as the muscles in his right hand twinged and pulled, too tight, especially in contrast to the soft, healthy tension of his left. This was getting him nowhere. And now that the initial indulgent impulse to get smashed out of his mind had passed, Kid was left as he usually was after indulging in alcohol: in pain and not much else. Contrary to his hopes, his drunken state wasn't stopping his frustratingly frequent thoughts from nagging at him; it was just tangling them, making them even more frustrating to trace and deflect. And it was harder to focus on the central part, which mattered most: that Shinichi was going to tell Mouri-san. In his own body, in his right size and voice and hands, Shinichi would finally tell Mouri-san what he'd been hiding.  
  
Which meant Kid and Kaito should think about Aoko, and what to tell her. She wouldn't take it well...probably. It had been so long, so secret for so much silence, that maybe they didn't even know for sure, Kid mused. Maybe Aoko would surprise them. They should tell Aoko just enough to make it an equal offer of vulnerability, a reciprocal gesture to Shinichi's. Even though they really didn't want to tell her, and Shinichi clearly did want to tell Mouri-san. Where concealing their true identities was second-nature to Kid and Kuroba, it was a burden to Shinichi, one that pained him every time he had to lie to Mouri-san's face. By pushing Shinichi into telling her, Kid had done the girl and Shinichi both a big favor.  
  
Wait, why was this about Shinichi, again?  
  
* * *  
  
"What time is it?" Movement in his room, soft whisper of cloth being shifted.  
  
"Half past four, more or less--" A brush of air against his skin; somebody was... there was a sheet over him; someone had straightened it, tucked it beneath his chin.  
  
"You should have woken me. I can get by on less sleep than you, Professor." Footsteps; a twinge in one arm as pressure was applied, something hot and bright, tiny flash of pain--  
  
Shinichi opened his eyes. Or tried to; they seemed to be glued shut with something unpleasant and gritty, much like whatever had taken up residence in his mouth. "Wh--" he began, and then coughed, choking on thin air as his esophagus contracted uncontrollably. Hands small and large caught him, steadied him, brought something that sloshed up to his lips. He drank greedily, not even bothering to try opening his eyes until the last of the liquid was gone. A wet cloth was wiped gently across his face, words murmured in a voice that he recognized: Agasa.  
  
 _Agasa? Ai. Agasa's house, and we were going to... I was going to... oh._ _ **Oh.**_  He opened his eyes.  
  
Professor Agasa and Haibara Ai, each with faces smudged with the lack of sleep; they peered at him from either side of the bed, two of the most unlikely angels a sleeper could ever wake to see. "Welcome back, Shinichi," said Agasa, beaming.  
  
"You're late," said Ai, but she was smiling.  
  
*  
  
Hours passed. Shinichi slept and woke, growing by gradual stages more comfortable. When he opened his eyes, waking as smoothly as he'd drifted off to sleep, and looked at the early morning sunlight streaming through the window and forming a corona around his hand - his big, broad, long-fingered, teenager's hand - he took it as a sign that he had rested long enough. He sat up - carefully - and stretched a little. A rustle on his lap made him look down.  
  
"Oh," he remarked.  
  
"Prrruuuuuuuu," trilled Moona.  
  
"Yeah? Good morning to you too, bird." Moving made things crackle and pop; joints protested here and there, but the night's agony was nothing more than a ghost just then. His voice--  _Shinichi's_  voice, not Conan's!-- sounded strange in his own ears, and as he stroked the dove with fingers that felt weirdly too large, he wondered where everybody was.  
  
Thin traces of sound filtered up through the open window: Agasa, talking on his cellphone. The door below slammed shut as the elderly scientist came back in, and Haibara's voice met and mingled with the Professor's in a quick question and response. "Can't let them see you," murmured Shinichi, staring out the window; his fingers slid across the bird's back, and as Moona shifted he felt the cool brush of a metal cylinder strapped to one pink leg brush against his arm.  
  
Shinichi freed the note with a moment's work (though it took him longer than it should, bigger fingers clumsy on the tiny catches and latch of the message tube). Its brevity startled him almost as much as did the customary Kid doodle in one corner. This time, the doodle had eyebrows drawn on as well, brought up and together in the center to indicate...concern? It layered extra facets into the brief message, facets which Shinichi wasn't sure he could decode completely. The message simply read,  
  
 _Welcome back._  
  
Something complicated and almost painful lodged in Shinichi's throat, and it was odds either way what it was going to turn into for a moment or two. In the end, it dissolved enough for him to carefully roll the tiny note up again and tuck it in his wallet on the table, in with the charms he'd been given. The something didn't vanish entirely, though, and he sat there absentmindedly stroking Moona as the autumn sunlight sent patches of heat flickering across the room.  
  
He'd... dreamed something about Kid. It was all mixed up in the pain and the heat/cold of the long night-- not clear enough to be remembered, but vivid and sharply outlined, hands and scars and a strange thread of  _comfort_  running through everything. The details wouldn't come through, not quite; but, brow furrowed, he thought that if maybe he concentrated... he could almost... very nearly...  
  
 _(...warm? I--)_  
  
There were footsteps coming up the stairs. In Shinichi's lap, Moona fluttered her wings and hopped down the bed almost primly before taking off through the open window just before Agasa's head popped around the doorjamb. "Shinichi?"  
  
"Yeah," he said, summoning a smile; it felt odd on his face, but it grew as he ran one hand through his tangle of hair. "Yeah, it's me."  
  
"Good," Agasa nodded, beaming as he bustled around the room. There were considerably fewer medical implements left out than there had been the last time Shinichi had been awake; Agasa began to pack away some of those still remaining, talking to Shinichi over his shoulder as he did.  
  
"Ai-chan wants you out of bed and dressed in ten minutes. She told me to remind you that the clock is ticking, and we have only about 22.825 hours of guaranteed time before you enter the risk zone for changing back. She wants you back in this room on IV's before that happens." Agasa paused, clearing his throat somewhat nervously, and continued in an appropriately sheepish tone. "...She's already called Mouri-san and asked her over. She said there was something important to tell her. So you, ahm, should expect a visitor within the hour."  
  
Shocked silence. Then, very carefully: "She. Did.  _ **What?**_ **"**  
  
The Professor sighed, patting the boy he'd known very nearly since birth on one shoulder. "Get dressed, Shinichi. Your clothes are in the closet-- I brought them over a few days ago." The older man hesitated, one hand on the door. "Don't be too hard on Ai-chan, hrm? I think she thinks she's doing you a favor."  
  
Shinichi closed his eyes. "She's not."  
  
 _It might be necessary, it might've been a long time coming, but a favor? No. Not a favor._  
  
"I'll be down in a few minutes, Professor. Is there coffee?"  
  
"Of course." The man sounded faintly wounded, and Shinichi opened his eyes just in time to catch the fleeting expression of guilt that passed over his face. "Decaf. --or at least Ai-chan  _thinks_  it's decaf; I, err, might have changed containers." The scientist had the grace to redden slightly before he stepped out of the doorway. Before he pulled the door completely shut, however, he added gently: "It's good to see you, Shin-chan. It'll all work out, you'll see." He closed the door.  
  
 _It's good to be back, Professor,_  thought Shinichi a little grimly as he rose carefully to an unaccustomed full height, swaying unsteadily as he tried to bring newly-lengthened limbs under control.  _Now all I have to do is survive this morning, and Ran._  
  
*  
  
Ran was, basically, trying not to think too hard.  
  
The morning was bright and cool, Autumn edged with the first thin touch of winter; as she rounded the corner of the last block before Professor Agasa's large and oddly-shaped home, she shoved her hands deeper into the pockets of her sweater and did her best to concentrate on just walking. But--  
  
\--there was the Kudo house, Shinichi's, overgrown lawn and locked gates silent as a questioning face. She hadn't been inside since... it'd been months, hadn't it? A long time. And while Ai-chan hadn't been very clear over the phone about the 'important thing she needed to hear', Ran wasn't an idiot. So now she dug her hands in, fisting the soft knit tightly between her fingers and tried not to hope. Or think too hard. Or panic.  
  
She'd done enough of that already, hadn't she?  
  
Ai was the one to drag the big door of Professor Agasa's house open, leaning against it to hold it open as she flatly regarded the young woman on her doorstep. "Mouri-san." An expression flickered through the child's features as she greeted Ran, almost too fast for Ran to catch. But the change in her eyes, from stony to something less than that, was clear, though quick. With more trepidation than she'd had before - even though she knew well that Ai-chan was  _always_  dour - Ran stepped into the genkan. She toed her shoes off, leaving them neatly beside each other, as Ai spoke in low tones.  
  
"Would you like a drink, Mouri-san? We have water, orange juice, Pocari Sweat, and Paical."  
  
Ran looked up at that. "Paical?" What would she need alcohol for at this hour of the day?  
  
Ai smiled without mirth. "It was just an educated suggestion. Follow me, we can sit in the living room."  
  
"Um, orange juice'd be fine." The girl was doing it again, acting all... Ran didn't even really have a term for Ai's behavior, other than 'unchildlike'. Which, considering Conan's uneven standards of behavior, didn't exactly work very well-- 'childlike' wasn't a very useful or definitive term. She followed the little girl into the living room, glancing around. "Isn't the Professor here?" she asked, settling onto an overstuffed couch.  
  
"He's occupied," Ai answered with her characteristic terseness. The girl wasn't even facing Ran as she talked, instead focusing on the small details of sorting....pills? A large amount of pills. Ran tried to keep her apprehension from her face, feeling less and less certain what was going on.  
  
"Then...did you have something to tell me, Ai-chan?" she ventured, hoping for conversation that would fill the eerily silent void of Agasa's cavernously huge living room. "Did you want to talk about school, or something else?"  
  
Ai shot a glance over her shoulder at Ran, one that was...by Ai standards...almost sympathetic. "I'll get you that orange juice." She left the room.  
  
There were footsteps on the stairs, heavy and a little uneven; from where she sat, Ran could just see the first-floor landing and the steps leading up from that. Hands in her lap, she watched sock-clad feet and denim cuffs descend into view, making their way a little unsteadily downwards. Feet, cuffs, knees...  _Agasa doesn't wear jeans,_ she thought, prickling with --apprehension? The steps stumbled just a little, almost as if the walker wasn't quite sure where his feet would land when he stepped downwards. Knees, the beginnings of a red sweater, large hands holding onto a railing with a tight grip--  
  
"...Shinichi?"  
  
"Hi, Ran," said Kudo Shinichi quietly, smiling. That smile faltered as Ran's beautiful blue eyes filled with tears; as they spilled over silently, and she bit the inside of her lip, so subtly, a little motion that many other people might miss, Shinichi did his best to hurry down the remainder of the stairs and cross Agasa's large living room toward Ran.   
  
Once he'd reached her, he sat delicately down on the couch to her right, bracing himself with his hands as he lowered down. His manner suggested sore muscles and exhausted limbs. Still his expression was earnest, invigorated just by his proximity to her. He looked at her - straight at her, not craning his neck up to see, not propped on a stool -  _straight_  at her, and his hands - the right size, his  _real_  hands - wanted so badly to smooth Ran's flyaway hairs away from her soft mouth that he had to clench them against his knees to hold still.   
  
Shinichi started to speak, then paused, looking over Ran's face with concern, noting the tightness around her eyes, the crease of her brow that she was fighting to smooth out. "Ran...are you okay?"  
  
She shook her head, wiping the tears away almost angrily. "I almost, a-almost don't believe it's really you," she said; her hands clenched. "Every time you show up it's like a mirage or a ghost or, or I'm making you up.  _No,_  I'm not okay. How long'll it be for this time? Ten minutes, or maybe even an hour? Or are you going to, to  _look_ like you but not  _act_  like you? You've done that too." Another tear spilled out, she raised her hand to wipe it away, but fingers closed around hers, stopping them, and Ran looked back up.  
  
"You could tell?" Shinichi's dark blue eyes were shadowed, tired; he looked haunted, older than his seventeen years should have allowed. "You could tell that it wasn't me?" He reached out with his free hand and wiped away the tear; the knuckles of his hand were warm, almost feverishly hot against her skin.  
  
"Not at first. Afterwards... you just weren't you. You looked right, sounded right, moved right, but--" He hadn't let go of her other hand yet; abruptly Ran was aware of a difference, a change in Shinichi's appearance that had nothing to do with impostors or  _whatever_  had gone on. He was, just a little, larger; his wristbones hung out of the red sweater's cuff, his arms and legs seemed longer, his hair needed cutting... and he needed a shave. Just barely, but that was stubble edging his jawline.  
  
Wait. Red sweater...?  
  
"I gave you that, didn't I?" Her own free hand came up to touch the cuff, and a small smile broke through Ran's agitation. "Back when we were supposed to meet at the movies and there was that awful explosion."  
  
"You did," Shinichi answered, laying his fingers beside Ran's on the red fabric. "I haven't had a chance to wear it since then, but...today's perfect for it." He frowned slightly, covering Ran's hand on his wrist with his own before moving it away. Their other hands remained joined, and far from letting go, Shinichi gripped Ran's hand even tighter as he spoke.  
  
"Ran, about when I'm going to leave...this time isn't going to be like any of the others. I'm going to stay in this room with you until you're satisfied, until I've told you what I need to tell you. And after that, I'll stay with you for as long as I'm able, and when I'm not able, I promise, this time, you'll  _know why._ "  
  
There was a polite cough from the far doorway; Ai stood there, not one but two glasses of orange juice in her hands. Wordlessly handing them over, she stared at Shinichi for a long moment before glancing back at Ran. "Let me know if you change your mind about that Paical," she said calmly, and slipped out of the room.  
  
 _Ran's actually going to listen. I'm actually going to tell her. Can I panic now, please?_  Shinichi swallowed hard, and for one brief moment wished a little bizarrely that he was wearing Conan's glasses; the urge to hide behind something was almost overwhelming. But that was what this was all about, wasn't it? No more hiding, not from Ran, ever again.  _I've always said that there was only one truth; time to see how much I mean it._  "Ran? You remember when we went to Tropical Land the night I--" he hesitated; "--I went away?"  
  
She nodded; their hands still clung to each other between them.  
  
Shinichi sighed. "Those men I followed... Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if I hadn't seen them. I'd still be here, I'd be in classes with you, I'd still live at home, we'd be talking about college and cram school and I'd be  _ordinary."_  He said the word wistfully, like it was some sort of incredible dream or unattainable goal-- and then snorted. "Or as ordinary as I can get. Who knows? Anyway, I, uh..." The teenager took a drink of his juice and sat it down. "I'm stalling. Right. Ran? You want every detail now, or just the important ones?"  
  
Ran's face was drawn in concentration, brow creased, eyes hard and strained with the difficulty of holding herself back as Shinichi rambled. At his question, she shook a little as she drew breath to steady herself, drawing stillness into her just as smoothly and effectively as her karate had trained her to do. She squeezed his hand, not letting go, and looked up from her lap to look Shinichi straight in the eye.  
  
"I know you said you would stay. But Shinichi, you haven't --" She stopped, bit her tongue, and took another deep breath, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, she'd gotten her equilibrium back, and addressed him levelly. "I want...I  _need_... to know where you've been, what you've been doing, and when you'll be back for good. Now. Before you disappear again."  
  
 _Oh. She's going to kill me. And I_ _ **deserve**_ _it. Here goes. Deep breath, don't flinch, just say it._    
  
His fingers tightened on hers. "I've been close by. I've never really left. And... God, Ran, I don't know how to explain this to you, but--" Shinichi closed his own eyes. "Wednesday night you talked about those Penguin Adventurers books; you pointed out which one I used to like best, said I used to take them on trips. Thursday morning you burned your wrist with steam when you were cooking rice for breakfast. And you asked--" (he swallowed) "--Conan-- to bring you back something special from his trip." His voice was a little rough, shaky around the edges. "I don't know what happened this morning because I wasn't there."  
  
Dead silence.  
  
Ran's mouth drew tight, lips white with hard pressure, while she blinked back the tears that had begun to pour in thick, fast rivers down her face, beginning to saturate the chest and neckline of her shirt. She opened her mouth to speak; nothing came out. She tried again and managed a small, frightened, soft noise. Finally she choked, swallowed, and then the words finally flowed.  
  
"S-so-- So many times, so many - so many moments, I kept thinking, and every time, I mean, it's crazy, it's stupid, it's impossible, but -- but I  _know you,_  Shinichi, and - and - and I thought I was going crazy, that I was feeling like the you in the forest was less you than - than - and - and every time, every time I really thought I was just _sure_ , and that I could ask you, that I could finally say - that -  _every_  time, something -- and it was so convenient, but I couldn't - I couldn't wonder, because you were _right there_  - but then you'd be gone again - and - it - I --" She swallowed, a soft, barely audible keening note swelling in her throat as, finally, her tears gave way to a real, full-throated sob, wrapped around his name.  
  
" _Shinichi,_  I --" She covered her face in her hands, tearing them free of his. Tears leaking between her fingers, Ran left her mouth uncovered, head bowed, shoulders curled in as though that would help her with the pain, and found her voice again, lower and steadier than before.  
  
"Conan-kun. Conan-kun." She waited for an answer; when none came, she tried again. " _Conan-kun._ " Still nothing, Shinichi sitting wordless beside her. Angry now, Ran sat up straight, eyes blazing, and grabbed one of Shinichi's hands with both of her own, gripping painfully tight. " _Shinichi,_  Conan-kun,  _somebody_  answer me!"  
  
"I will," came a dry voice from the doorway.  
  
Ai stood there, small hands gripping her own glass of juice, incongruously unruffled. "Kudo-kun? Do shut up for a few minutes, will you? I believe that this part of the explanation belongs to me." Slippered feet silent on the carpeted floor, the girl took her own seat beside one window, feet dangling but neatly crossed at the ankles as she sipped her juice. Shinichi made a convulsive movement, his hands knotting dangerously into fists; Ai ignored this, leaning back comfortably in her chair as if this was an ordinary conversation between ordinary people.  _That word again,_  thought Ran, gripping Shinichi's hand and trying to ignore how he had clenched her fingers almost tight enough to hurt.  
  
"I don't believe in absolution," said the child quietly. "My guilt is my guilt; it doesn't belong to anyone else. Before I met Kudo-kun, my name was... well; you could call me 'Sherry' if you wanted to." She half smiled. "I worked under duress for a criminal organization to develop a drug, one with a number of uses; and Kudo-kun here? He was the unwilling test-subject for that drug due to following the wrong people at the wrong time." Ai glanced at Shinichi, a mere flicker of a look, acknowledgement: _Whatever you're guilty of, you didn't choose this part of it. And I'm not willing to share._  
  
"Yes. He was, is, will be... Conan-kun. Just as I was once a grown woman, before my own encounter with the drug." And, finished, Ai sipped her juice again for all the world as if she'd said nothing extraordinary whatsoever.  
  
Ran frowned, listening carefully, trying to distill the nonsense into sense, and as the incomprehensible flowed past her, unclaimed, one detail that  _was_  within her comprehension snagged her attention. "...Will...be?" Shinichi flinched away from those words, and Ran, seeing his reaction, pressed them harder. " _Will be?_  Shinichi, you're - this --" She gritted her teeth, squeezed her eyes shut; her two-fisted grip on Shinichi's hand tightened so much that his knuckles creaked. He didn't even squeak in complaint.  
  
"You're going to leave me again. You're going to..."  
  
"Ran, I'm not leaving you." Her head whipped up, eyes like ice fire, ready to fight that empty promise, but Shinichi held one finger up, a half centimeter, a breath, away from her lips, and startled her into silence.  
  
"I'm staying with you. And - yeah, I'll change back. But this time, I won't hide it from you. I'll let you see. I won't run away from you again. Ever."  _I promise,_  said his eyes, tired and wearing an echo of pain.  _I promise. Never again._  
  
"He  _should_  have left, you know," added Ai with a touch of waspishness. "It would've been safer for all of us if he had, oh-- gone off with his parents, I believe that was a possibility; but he chose to stay here, with you." The girl (not a child at all, how had Ran ever mistaken her for one?) shrugged slightly. "Still, I suppose there's safety in numbers, such as it is." She regarded Mouri Ran over the rim of her glass, pale eyes unblinking. "Or did you suppose he remained with you,  **like that** , for his own amusement? Or out of sheer embarrassment? My former employers are not flexible, Mouri-san. They killed my sister when she slipped their grasp, they'd kill myself and Kudo-kun if they could locate us... and," she added with the first trace of sympathy that she'd shown in the conversation so far, "they'd destroy you as well, your family, your acquaintances, anyone who might have an inkling, even the barest  _hint_  of their existence if they became aware of that threat. To them, it'd be like stepping on a cockroach, nothing more."  
  
The child-- the young woman-- sighed, her calm slipping just for a moment to show something else beneath it: sorrow and a profound, heavy weight. The glimpse lasted barely a second before her mask slid back into place with an almost audible click; then Ai added almost lightly: "So have a little charity, Mouri-san. He didn't hide all this time in the guise of a little boy because it was  _fun."_  
  
Silence. Ice in the three glasses cracked audibly, tiny clicks and creaks.  
  
The girl glanced at her watch, sliding from the chair. "Twenty-two point zero five hours left. Amazing, isn't it, how little time a revelation can take?" Carrying her glass, Ai left the room as silently as she had arrived.  
  
In her wake, Shinichi sat still, looking sickened; beside him, Ran was clearly doing mental sums.  
  
"At the play...and when you pretended to be Shiragami-sama...that was it, wasn't it?" She turned to Shinichi, sitting on the edge of the couch to face him straight-on, and took his hands in her own. "That was why you always disappear without...without saying goodbye, or telling me when you're going to leave. That's why Hattori always has to cover for you with those silly stories of his. That's why I never know when you'll come and when you'll go." As hope rose in Shinichi's eyes, Ran smiled gently, squeezing his hands with affection, and tilted her head prettily. "Isn't it?"  
  
"Yes, that's wha _oooouuuuwww!_  Ran, what the--OW! Ow!"  
  
With both Shinichi's hands trapped beneath one of hers - smaller, but stronger, and holding onto his fingers with a fearsome strength - Ran had one hand free while Shinichi had none, and was using that advantage to slap him  _silly_. Once across his face, another on his shoulder, a slap upside the back of his head, a pounding impact (much gentler than her real strength) to his chest... and all the while she held onto his hands with a grip just shy of "maimingly" tight.   
  
Too slowly, Shinichi's hindbrain informed him that he  _might_  have wanted to be wary of that too-sweet-to-be-true smile, especially coming from his darling, beloved, highly combustible Ran.  _No,_ _REALLY_ _?_  he crisply responded to it, tensing his jaw just in time to keep from biting his tongue when the next slap across his face landed. As he brought his head back around to center, cheeks stinging (she hadn't backhanded him yet, but he figured that was probably next) he noticed she was saying something under all the abuse.  
  
"Stupid, selfish, immature, careless, selfish, stupid, stupid, stupid, STUPID--"  
  
"Woah, Ran, Ran, ple--" He paused as another slap landed, wincing. "--Please, Ran, calm down, what--"  
  
"CALM DOWN?" It was a good thing Ran had hold of Shinichi's hands when that question, as full of righteous anger and indignation could ever make it, thundered from her thin frame, or else he might have scuttled across the room in an instinct dive toward self-preservation. Sure, Ran could get scary. Of course he knew that - he'd _always_  known that. But.  _But._  Shinichi swallowed thickly, eyes wide, wondering how to make himself a smaller target.  
  
"Shinichi you  _idiot_ , you think I can calm down when I just found out that you've  _been_  here and you - and they - and --" Hysteria began to take over. "Drugs! And guns! And secret employers who are going to kill me! And kill you! And you're seven! No, wait, you're eighteen now! And you haven't done  _any_  of your college applications paperwork!" She paused for breath, suddenly deflating, and leaned away from Shinichi, scooting back into the deep comforting cushions of Agasa's couch. Drawing her knees up to her chin, Ran released Shinichi's hands, wrapped her own around herself, and settled her chin on her knees with the deliberate, numb motions of someone who is merely bemused, not distressed, by watching the world crumble around her.  
  
"I think I want that Paical now."  
  
"Would a little Madeira do instead?" That was Ai again, back in the doorway; this time she had an extremely agitated Professor Agasa hovering behind her, and if any large man in the world could've managed to fit his body behind the tiny one of a child... "Paical-- that was a little joke of mine," added Ai, looking satisfied. She brought over a very small glass full of a rich, ruby liquid.  
  
Ran's hands were shaking; Shinichi took it for her, holding it out while wondering if he'd get his arm back intact. "Paical... wasn't that the stuff that turned me back that time with Heiji--?" he asked, rubbing one cheek ruefully. Ran gave him a baleful look and accepted the glass, choking on the potent liquor. She shuddered, still huddling in a tight, self-protective curl, but her breathing began to slow a trifle as she sipped her drink.  
  
"Yes, that. You don't need to be anywhere near it, Shin-chan; who knows what it'd do to you in your present state?" Agasa was all but hiding behind the doorjamb, and when Ran looked up at the sound of his voice he gave her a hangdog grimace. "Sorry, Ran-chan. So very sorry." He paused and then added a bit timidly, "Errr... could you not beat up on Shinichi any more? The bruises'll show on Conan after he changes back, and he's so much smaller then."  
  
Ran's head swiveled from Agasa to Shinichi on a slow pivot. Then she blinked, taking in Shinichi's sheepish expression, cheeks flushed from her slapping, shoulders hunched, hands red and sore-looking, and her eyes went wide and her mouth got very small. "Oh, oh god, I didn't--" Clear as if it was written across her face, visions of battered-child!Conan flickered through her mind's eye, and guilt began to overwhelm her anger.   
  
Before Ran could get too apoplectic with guilt, Shinichi caught one of her hands in his own and, having caught it, closed it gently within both of his own. A glance over his shoulder in the direction of the doorway was more than a little pointed. "Could you guys...you know, give us a minute?"  
  
"Twenty-one point five five hours," Ai muttered, as she followed Agasa out of the room.  
  
With the distractions gone, Shinichi turned back to Ran with an apologetic expression on his face. He released her hand gently. "Agasa's right about the punches...but you don't generally get bruising if you just use slaps. And I know I deserve them."  
  
A little of the guilt filtered away. "Yes, you did," she said, "but I didn't mean to... to..." Both her hands caught his in turn, and Ran stared at it, turned it over in her own as if she'd never seen it before. "You're actually going to turn back into, into--"  
  
"--Conan. Yeah. You'll be there, Ran, I promise. I said so, didn't I?"  
  
Her fingertip measured out the outline of a smaller hand against his, thin lines on his palm; Shinichi swallowed, memory shouting into bits of his brain and getting an echo back that had a very odd shape to it. "But he's so  _little._  Where does it all..." Ran paused, looking up with a slightly queasy expression. "...go?"  
  
"Um. I don't exactly know. I think it kind of melts."  
  
That knocked the guilt away as well as any lingering vestiges of anger.  _"MELTS?"_  she said in horror. "Oh my God, Shinichi, how many times've you done this?" She was still holding on. "There was the thing with the play, and Shiragami-sama, and the... wait, that wasn't you that time, but there was the-- never mind. Never mind." Picking up the almost-forgotten glass of Madeira, Ran swallowed the last sip and shuddered again. "Shinichi? Who else knows?"  
  
He rubbed at his eyes with his free hand, grateful that she hadn't blacked one of them; that would've been hard to explain. "My parents, Hattori... that's about it. For certain, anyway; Takagi-san and Megure-keibu probably know something, and Nakamori-keibu. Nobody else except for Agasa and Ai, that's it." Shinichi looked down at the hand that still held his so tightly. "Ran? ...What do you want to do now, now that you know?" He took a deep breath, preparing for what he'd known he'd have to ask. "Do you want me to move out? As Conan, I mean... I can stay here, with Agasa." The detective felt his other hand clench but kept it at his side, hidden.  
  
Ran's hands contracted around Shinichi's closer hand before she'd even drawn breath to respond.  _"NO."_  She blinked - the aggressiveness of her response had surprised even her. Shinichi, also, was looking puzzled. Ran drew a breath, let it out slowly, and tried again. "No, Shinichi, you're going to stay. First off, it makes more sense that we  _not_  change what we're doing, if you don't want to get discovered. And it would be very much out of Professor Agasa's way to have to tote you around for form's sake. I already am used to taking you to - to school," Ran explained, gamely pushing on past the awkwardness of that idea. "And picking you up again, and Dad would wonder why you suddenly moved out, and - and - oh gosh,  _that's_  how you always have your homework done so fast. I had wondered."   
  
With a giggle, she squeezed his hands, then released them, lifting one hand to smooth down a wild section of his hair. She left the back cowlick alone, of course, a lifetime of experience with both Shinichi and Conan having taught her that some battles just couldn't be won. Her gesture was caring, delicate, and instead of returning promptly to her lap once she was done fussing, her hand hovered beside Shinichi's cheek, fingertips tracing his ear unthinkingly. "It all makes sense now," Ran murmured, thin glassy streaks of tears beginning to trace her cheeks once again. But the tear tracks swerved, drawn off-track by the high, friendly curves of her cheeks, rounded by her smile. "It all finally...this whole past year...Shinichi, it all makes sense again."  
  
 _Yeah, but when you start working through it, some parts are going to make you want to put me through a WALL,_  he thought, memories of a certain hot springs trip passing all-too-vividly through his mind. "That's-- good? I think? Ran?" Even with her eyes reddened and tear-tracks on her cheeks, she looked beautiful. No, she looked like  _Ran._  And the memories of the girl and the childhood friend and the gangly middleschooler and the lethal karate champion all tangled in his head and his heart, melting and melding with Conan's Ran-neechan, who was as real as all the rest. "You'll let me stay?" He blew out his breath, almost a gasp of relief more than a sigh.  
  
Her hand was still against his face, fingertip slipping along his cheekbone; Shinichi held it there with one of his own. "Ran, I can't promise this'll work," he said quietly. "I can't even promise you'll ever see me like this again; I mean, this isn't a cure, it's a temporary patch and that's all. Ai and the Professor, they're trying, but-- there's a really good possibility that I'll have to," and his voice faltered for a second, "grow up all over again. And there's the Black Organization and all the secrecy and... I'm not asking you to wait for me. Not again."  
  
"But... will you work with me now? Not wait on the sidelines, not live for a promise or a maybe, just... will you help me? Like I am? Even if I can't make it back to where I was before?"  
  
It was the hardest thing in a huge handful of hard things, one of the myriad possible questions Shinichi'd promised himself he'd ask Ran if she was willing to listen. Because, before she'd been anything else, before they'd become aware of each other as male and female and girl and boy and young woman and young man, they'd been friends. And a friend could ask another friend for help, couldn't they?  
  
( _Chibitantei,_  whispered Kid's mocking voice in his mind, full of affectionate teasing.  _Warm,_  said his own voice back, and Shinichi honestly couldn't say to whom the response was meant.)  
  
Ran sat still, her thumb rubbing across the back of Shinichi's hand gently while she thought. After a moment, she glanced up, asking quietly for another glass of wine. Shinichi brought it for her, giving it carefully into her hands, and sat beside her again. Ran slipped her hand around his again, a firm and gentle grasp, and sipped her wine, watching her reflection in the surface of the rich liquid. Another sip, and she set the glass aside on the table. When she looked up her lips weren't any redder for having drunk the ruby liquor, but her cheeks were flushed, and when she spoke, Shinichi realized why.  
  
"I don't know, Shinichi. I have to... If I'm nev-- If I'm not going to see you this way again for a long time, I have to... I want to... I..." Unbidden tears, again. But Ran had the peculiar ability to work through her tears without denying them, and without being weakened by them either.  
  
"I don't mind waiting, Shinichi. I'll wait another ten years for you...twenty, if it takes that. And - I'm not saying I don't want to help you, that's not even...that's not even a question. I'll  _always_  support you and help you. But... But...if this is going to be goodbye to  _this_ , at least for a while...then...Shinichi, can I...please..."  
  
"Not goodbye yet," he said, wiping away tears with one finger. "Didn't you hear Ai? Twenty-something hours." And  _then_  he kissed her.  
  
It wasn't as if either of them had any experience or technique; but for a first kiss, it had shy enthusiasm and a lot of emotion behind it. Neither had anything to complain about, nor about the one that followed, nor about the one that followed that.  
  
Outside in the hallway, possibly not quite as far away as they should have been, Ai looked at the Professor. "Ten minutes, and then we'll walk loudly," she whispered; and he nodded, following her at a tiptoe back towards the lab. Haibara'd always been the more practical of the two.


	12. "Hangover, mailbox, movie"

  
  
In the bedroom he shared with Kuroba Kaito, one internationally feared, renowned, and cursed jewel thief, Kaitou 1412, aka Kaitou Kid, was whining.  
  
"Loud loud loud louuuuud," he moaned, covering his head with a pillow. Unfortunately, the noise he was suffering from wasn't the kind that could be blocked out with a pillow.  
  
 _Youuuuuu picked the alcohol,_  Kuroba sang gleefully at him, "stomping" around their mental shared space under the guise of doing a jig.  _Youuuuu decided not to call it quits after twenty shots._  
  
"I was weak! I have sinned! Benten, forgive me! Oh, for luck's sake, my HEAD." Mumbling obscenities, Kid stuffed a knuckle into each of his ears, trying to plug them up; even the swish of water through the pipes of the house seemed to pain him.  
  
Mercifully, Kuroba came to a halt somewhere around the midpoint of the mental room, smooth wooden paneling below his feet, brightly polished mirrors to his right. The ceiling above was high, but he pushed it higher, then mirrored it, both with no more than a thought. Interior decorating had a different definition when you shared headspace.  
  
Outside their head, Kid flopped over onto his back, again sprawled on their broad queen-size bed -- the only place in the mansion that he felt comfortable in talking openly to his other half, despite repeated assurances from Jintarou that the staff had been selected with the most selective of confidential personalities in mind. Looking up at the blissfully plain, stationary, uncomplicated ceiling, Kid threw one arm across his brow with a sigh, wiping some of the sweat from his skin as he did.   
  
"Oh thank luck, thank Benten, thank everything. Kuroba, I don't care what they say about you, you really...are...oh, wait. Wait wait wait  _wauuuuugh_ , stoppit, stoppit, oh FOR LUCK'S SAKE, KUROBA,  _put down the fire!_ "  
  
Kuroba smiled angelically, bringing his five flaming juggling pins down from their double arc pattern and collecting them calmly in his hands, fingers splayed around their necks. The fat bottoms of the pins, wrapped in incendiaries and dunked in oil, burned merrily, the intensity of the bright flames made even more glaring by the chemicals lacing the cloths and twine wrapped around the pins. Acid-bright green, pink, and orange flames, so much more visually distracting and jarring, twined around each other, one color to each pin, reflecting chaotically off of the mirrored ceiling and wall, blinding Kid from the inside out.  
  
 _Down? Why should I put it down? I'll burn our varnish._  He thumped the wooden tiling for emphasis, and the dulled thuds made Kid's head throb.  
  
Kid moaned pathetically, rolling back over and burying his face in his pillows. "Oh, gods and goddesses, why in the name of all that's blessed am I stuck with a _Magician_  for a headmate?"  
  
 _Because I got stuck with a drunkard Fool,_  Kuroba cheerily responded.  _Except you're not really much of a drunk at all. Except when you get depressed, and then the next morning, I get to practice my circus magic!_  
  
"You are a sadist."  
  
 _Naw. I would be the High Priest if that were so,_  Kuroba shrugged, before launching the pins ceilingward once again.  
  
A few minutes passed in glitteringly obnoxious silence, before Kuroba glanced 'at' Kid and smirked.  _Figure anything out when you found the bottom of the bottle last night?_  
  
"I would have greater faith in your earnesty if you would  _desist with the shiny,_ " Kid grumbled. "And no. Save that I am completely, utterly, fucked." He glanced to the window, the half-open curtains of which showed a cheery midmorning sky. "I hope Chibitantei is doing okay with Mouri-san."  
  
 _You're not worried?_  
  
"Worried? Of course I am! It would be bad if she killed him."  
  
 _What if she doesn't want to?_  
  
Kid sighed, rolling onto his side. His head sloshed, and he winced, moving much more slowly to tuck his knees up against his chest. "To be completely honest, I hope it goes splendidly. I hope it goes beyond splendidly."  
  
Kuroba snorted, passing two of the pins behind his back. They spun over his head and back into his hands; then he repeated the pattern. The pins drew a flaming figure eight in an arc over his head.  _Despite your contradictory interests?_  
  
"Nearly because of them, magician. Those two have a history."  
  
 _A_ _history,_ _even?_  
  
"Fair enough."  
  
Kuroba paused, letting the pins collect in his hands again, and studied Kid contemplatively.  _What says that you and Kudo can't have a history, too?_  
  
"...Go back to your goddamn juggling," Kid groused, burying his head under the pillow once more. Kuroba shrugged, stood on one leg, and tossed his pins skyward again.  
  
* * *   
  
"Make a fist, please; good. Blood pressure is one-sixty over ninety-eight, still somewhat hypertensive. Adult weight is up one point eight-seven kilos..."   
  
Kudo Shinichi was experiencing a rather strong bout of déjà vu. "Didn't we do this already?" he asked a little desperately. It had been bad enough seeing the Professor dabbing at his eyes sentimentally over himself and Ran, but having Haibara knock theatrically on the doorjamb and say  _Finished yet?_  in that tone of hers... And now he had to just sit there with his shirt off and let them play doctor.  
  
While Ran watched.  
  
Fighting the flush that he just  _knew_  was creeping along his all-too-visible face and neck and everything else, Shinichi looked pleadingly at Agasa. "Any chance of breakfast, Professor?" It was still fairly early, and his transformed body had informed him in no uncertain terms that it was starving; even now, a hopeful rumble that ended on an almost plaintive whine made itself known.  
  
Typing figures into a handheld datapad, the older man chuckled. "Of course, Shinichi, of course. For both of you-- Ran-chan, you couldn't've had time for breakfast yourself." His smile turned apologetic. "It's a pity we can't go out somewhere, but, hrrm, well. Not possible." He shrugged slightly, fingers flying.  
  
True enough; that was the problem with coming back from the dead, even in the most figurative sense... If you wanted your enemies to believe that you were still among the deceased, then showing your face at a local restaurant wasn't the best way to do it. Or on the streets, for that matter, or in any kind of public anywhere; he'd made that mistake before and very nearly not gotten away with it.  
  
 _Hell of a way to celebrate. I'd like to take Ran out someplace nice. And I wish..._  
  
There'd been a thought lingering in his mind-- a stupid, ridiculous, selfish thought, totally unrealistic and impossible, but one Shinichi was having a lot of trouble banishing. It had its seeds in the list of who-might-know-about-Conan that he'd reeled off, in his one deliberate omission: Kid, of course. Why?  
  
Tugging the red sweater back over his head (and tugging it vainly down over his protruding wristbones-- great, having a growth spurt and a  _growth spurt_  coincide, very weird), the teenager poked a little randomly at the tangle of impulses that had prompted the omission. Protectiveness, that was understandable; a touch of guilt, check; a dislike of even mentioning the thief anywhere outside secure surroundings, right... and, oddly enough, a twisty little need to keep their friendship to himself, locked away and separate.  
  
And yet, there was that wish... most probably born out of the euphoria of coming clean: the desire to have Ran and Kid meet. It kept intruding; try as he might, Shinichi couldn't quite banish it.  _Stupid; where's your brain, Kudo? That's not part of the arrangement; he wouldn't appreciate it, any more than you'd feel comfortable being dragged into the middle of whatever Kuroba's got going on with Nakamori's daughter. Use that mind of yours... What's that thing Kasan used to say? 'If wishes were fishes we'd swim in the sea'? --Okay, maybe not THAT saying, considering the subject, but still._    
  
He winced as a stab of pain shot through one knee, wobbling a bit as he slid off the exam table. "Joint aches?" asked Ai, one eyebrow tilting. "To be expected, but be careful. Your temperature's a little higher than normal too; be sure to drink as much liquid as possible right up until you reach the risk zone." She hopped down off her stool, almost comical in her diminutive slightness (unless she was holding a syringe; there was nothing comical about Ai with a syringe), gathering up clipboard and notes with brisk efficiency. "I'll get breakfast started; you two come along when you're ready."  
  
Which, of course, left him alone with Ran again, who'd been very quiet since they began the exam. A little shyly he glanced at her, feeling an involuntary smile curving his mouth; her hair was slightly mussed. And he knew why, too; that had been from  _his fingers,_  sliding through, the first time he'd ever had the nerve to do any such thing. "Ready for breakfast?" he asked.  
  
"Famished," she admitted, flushing as she realized what he was smiling at. Anxious hands reached quickly to pat down the tangled section of her hair while she tried her best to keep her blush from spreading. But Shinichi's hands in her hair, cupped around the back of her neck to hold her close to him while they kissed, had been so gentle and caring... _loving_ , even, that it was very hard to resist the urge to replay that recent memory, to maybe imagine what it might have been like if that red sweater she'd bought him had been her pillow, instead of covering him...  
  
Flaming red now, Ran stared fixedly at her fists on her knees. "I-I-I wonder if I should go help Professor Agasa with breakfast--"  
  
Shinichi felt the smile tip over into a grin. "Not unless you can produce a second microwave out've thin air-- he's big on the nuke-it-til-it-goes-ding! kinds of food. Ai cooks sometimes and she's been really pushing the healthy stuff, but I think they live mostly on frozen or takeout." He leaned back against the table, hands clasping the cold metal to either side; it felt so strange, seeing everything from his height-- disorienting, really, instead of familiar. "Anyway," he added teasingly, "right now they can take their time. Know what, Ran?"  
  
She blinked. "What?"  
  
"You look a lot better from this angle than you did when I was--" He held out a hand at waist-level, mock-frowned, and dropped it a few centimeters. "Adults look so WEIRD from down there. Not that I minded, much; but this is a lot better." And he simply leaned back and  _looked_  at her, just looked.  
  
From the right height, from the right eyes, from the right viewpoint. At last, even if it was temporary.   
  
Ran flushed, then rallied herself; with her characteristic confidence, she leaned forward, hands on her knees pivoting to wing her elbows out in a challenging pose. "Oh? I think I like it better when you're not looking up my nose at me! I think you - well you --" Conceding the fact that she didn't seem to be able to finish her sentence while staring at Shinichi like that, Ran stood up and brushed her skirt off matter-of-factly, and stepped forward so she was right in front of him.  
  
"Well!" And then  _she_  kissed  _him._  
  
Ran was a fast learner; the tentative kisses of earlier had proven that, and there was more confidence in how her hands settled on his collar, pulling him down so that they were on the same level. Still shy, still hesitant; Shinichi was too, but she was warm and soft and strong, and if they didn't have much time left then this was the best thing to use it for, wasn't it?  
  
"I missed you," she said, breath against his lips, not pulling away. "Even if you were here, I missed you."  
  
"I - ahm -  _Ran,_ " Shinichi managed, before pressing forward for another kiss. One hand behind her head to hold her close, Shinichi caught Ran's hand as she brought it up in halfhearted protest, weaving his fingers with hers and holding on tight. With their hands folded together at their chins, as though in prayer, Shinichi kissed Ran and wished for a way to make their scant twenty hours last longer.  
  
They jumped apart at the sound of rapping at the door. Shinichi's head swung to the open doorway, seeing no-one; Ran, heart fluttering, looked as well, then glanced back at Shinichi.  
  
"I have no idea," he began, before the rapping interrupted them again. Placing it better this time, Shinichi - with mild disorientation - swiveled around in place to peer up at the small window in the back wall of the room, directly over the exam table he sat on. Shielded by the constant greenery of pines, the tiny window had an even tinier sill, and a somewhat out-of-scale dove perched on that sill, rapping at the glass for all that she was worth. "She," of course, because Shinichi recognized her as Keeta - Kid's dusty rose dove.  
  
"Oh," he said.   
  
"That's a... Does the Professor keep pet birds?" asked Ran, baffled, because why else would a bird be obviously trying to gain entrance? The dove tapped again, ruffling her wings impatiently.  
  
"Long story," murmured Shinichi, popping open the window. "Come here, it's okay, it's just me, shhhh..." The dove shied back slightly, but allowed herself to be lured in and soothed; he stroked her breastfeathers gently, smiling. "She doesn't belong to the Professor, but she..... um....."  
  
Now, how the  _hell_  was he going to explain  _THIS_  one? It was almost worse than drugs and guns and so forth.  
  
His stomach chose that moment to growl rudely, startling the bird. Scratching the tiny feathered head with a fingernail, Shinichi sighed. "Ran? Can I just say that it's a **really**  long story and tell you that one later? So we can eat? I need to send her back-- oh; her name's Keeta, by the way." There was a message-capsule attached to one leg, of course; he popped it free and unrolled the slip of paper as he spoke.

> _Shinichi -_
> 
> _Because I hope that's who I'm talking to, in body as well as mind -_
> 
> _If the drugs killed you, please inform Haibara that I'll be along to wreak my revenge on her for taking away my one good playmate._
> 
> _If not, please send your second out to check the mailbox. If you choose to accept them, the tools for a day's escape are concealed within....but promise me you'll only use them if it wouldn't trouble Mouri-san too much for you to do so._
> 
> _If she does feel it's a fair price to pay for the chance, Mouri-san may find herself rewarded by the other little present I've left for you two. In the mailbox again. If the choice is unacceptable, the passes can be exchanged for any other divertissement of equal value (which means sorry, you can't go see that one that just came out this weekend.)_
> 
> _And lastly, don't worry about duplicating anything...I promise you, your doppelganger will be quite occupied for the window of hours intended. But not far away at all._

  
  
There was no signature, nor Kid doodle - but it was very clearly Kid's handwriting.  
  
Shinichi allowed the thin paper to roll back up, brain reeling; half of him was going  _He did what? Wait, what? He arranged a way for me to what? YES I CAN GO OUT, OH THANK GOD. Only I'm going to have to tell Ran something, he HAS to know that, but he--!!_  
  
...while the rest was hiding beneath the nearest piece of furniture and muttering  _Please don't let this involve me wearing a skirt. Please._  
  
He shook off the notion and looked up, still absentmindedly smoothing Keeta's feathers, to find Ran staring at him apprehensively. "Shinichi? The last time I saw a dove-- a trained dove-- was in the park," she said with a certain trepidation. "And it had to do with the Kaitou Kid. Did he just send you a heist-notice?" She sounded more than a little bewildered, and he shook his head quickly.  
  
"No! No-- it's, uh, part of that 'long story' thing." Shinichi scratched his head, allowing Keeta to sidle up his arm until she sat firmly beneath one ear. "I promise I'll explain, but... could you do me a favor? Go check Agasa's mailbox, okay? Please?"  
  
With an unconfident glance at Keeta - who cooed and began to nibble Shinichi's ear - Ran skittered out the doorway to do so, apprehensively checking over her shoulder as she left until the hallway bent and took her out of sight. Shinichi settled down on the edge of the exam table to wait, disengaging Keeta's beak from his earlobe, and tried not to fidget in nervousness.  
  
It struck him, rather belatedly, that he'd just sent his  ~~ _girlfriend_~~  best friend out to open a small enclosed box which had certainly been tampered with by the Kaitou Kid, without  _any_  idea what was in that box.  
  
 _Please don't let her get a gas capsule,_  he grumbled, reconsidering his choice of company. Nice, normal, ordinary people didn't have crazy people for friends. Realizing that, Shinichi frowned. Man, being an ordinary person must be boring.  
  
At that point, Ran returned, breathless. She'd clearly run the way back from the mailbox, and unfortunately gathered some lookers-on as she did. Agasa walked into the exam room behind Ran, who carried a mostly flat cloth-wrapped package big enough that she was supporting it with both forearms to keep it level. "The note said not to shake it too much," she explained, handing the bundle over into Shinichi's arms.  
  
The bundle was wrapped like a bento lunch, in one flat cloth with its corners tied in the top center, and a small sheet of stationary - printed with an excess of green clovers - advised just what Ran had reported. Additionally, it read:

> _Make sure to read all the instructions, not-so-chibitantei. I didn't pack you any spares._

  
  
Shinichi closed his eyes. "Okay. First thing to remember: this is from a friend. Second thing to remember? He's crazy." Very, very carefully he undid the knot and drew back the edges, and only  _then_  did he open his eyes.  
  
There was a makeup brush.  
  
Okay, wait. Shinichi focused on the whole package, and then the brush made sense. There was a makeup brush, the big fat kind, carefully nestled on top, where it wouldn't get squished. Beneath and beside it were shapes of latex rubber, irregularly textured and weirdly shaped, each of them within its own cellophane envelope. Adhesive and solvent packages, tiny enough for one application, lay beside those. Underneath the brush, a small compact of makeup colors and shades, and a folded note. Actually, now that he focused,  _everything_  had a small folded note attached to it, from the brush to the facial prosthetics to the clothing (casual jeans and two layers of shirts, clean but worn-in, and not his style at all) folded neatly beneath the disguise material, and the sneakers (a different brand and tread pattern than his own) paired carefully beneath that. A square of cardboard on the bottom of the whole assembly made it stable and easy for carrying; tucked into the shoes were a pot of gel-format hair dye and (incongruously) a tube of unflavored mens' chapstick.  
  
Shinichi sat back from the array of implements, laid out across the exam table beside him, and boggled.  
  
Ran, on the other hand, was slightly more vocal. "This... friend of yours? Likes disguises, keeps trained doves, sends mysterious notes?" She fixed him with exactly the kind of stare she'd been using on Conan for nearly a year when he'd tried to tell a few of his less believable whoppers, and Shinichi wilted.  
  
"I, um..."  
  
"And he's given you--" Delicately she lifted the makeup brush, flicking the soft bristles against her palm, "a present? Just what  _does_  that note say?" Before he could do more than open his mouth she had twitched it from his fingers; on Shinichi's shoulder, Keeta made a disapproving sound.  
  
Ran scanned the page quickly, her pretty eyes narrowing as she read; she flipped it over but found nothing on the back, and so returned her attention to the message. After reading it a second time, gears visibly turning in her head, she handed the note back to Shinichi and darted out the door of the exam room, past Agasa.  
  
The men watched her go. "Ahm, Shinichi? D'y think I--"  
  
"Yeah, I can handle this," Shinichi said, waving assurance at the scientist.  _Though, really, I probably can't._  "Go on, I'll be okay."  
  
With a mutter, Agasa left.  
  
Poking through the bundle, the teenager carefully examined each item with a sort of horrified interest. There was a definite pattern to the prosthetics, the clothing, the makeup; it all pointed to a very specific look.  _Not that Kid'd be sloppy about this, even working with an amateur,_  thought Shinichi as he held a cellophane envelope up to the light.  _And... he meant it as a gift; not a joke, a... Ran had it right; a present._  The word could mean 'current moment' as well as a gift, of course; just the kind of play on word you'd expect.  
  
He'd flipped open the note a moment or two before Ran's footsteps sounded at the door again; she was out of breath, carrying a small envelope in one hand. At his inquiring look, she held it up.  
  
"It -- I peeked, sorry, Shinichi. It's movie tickets. For tonight, for a movie at the theater, with popcorn included and everything. And inside, look." Ran held out the envelope for Shinichi's perusal. Within were the two vouchers, just as she'd said; besides that, on the inside of the envelope, revealed by the removal of the tickets, was a short message:

> _Only if you can see through his masks, Mouri-san._

  
  
They studied the message in silence together, Ran perching on the side of the table beside Shinichi, chin pillowed on her own knuckles, the fingertips of which rested hesitantly on the crest of his shoulder, allowing her to curl closely beside him without quite admitting to it. After a moment, Ran snickered, burying the sound in the knit of Shinichi's sweater.  
  
"Shinichi...is the Kaitou Kid...setting us up on a date?"  
  
He nodded.  
  
"Really?"  
  
Nod, nod.  
  
"Why?"  
  
 _Because... he wants to? Because he can? Because he-- you don't say 'he has a good heart' about somebody you try to shoot with anesthetic darts and catch and put in jail, right?_  
  
Instead, Shinichi turned his head and rested his chin on top of Ran's head, closing his eyes and breathing in her scent. "Because he's my friend," he said softly, and it was the truth.  
  
Silence, peaceful and complete; neither moved for a moment... until tiny, forgotten pink feet began to step their way delicately from Shinichi's shoulder onto Ran's ear and up her hair, one clawful at a time. She made a small, inelegant squeak; "Shhh, she won't hurt you, will you, Keeta?" Keeta meeped back, scaling Mount Ran until she reached the next ascent. Her feet were warm and scratchy as she struggled up Shinichi's shorter hair, at last reaching the summit with a triumphant flutter of wings.  
  
From the doorway there was a sudden click and flash; startled, three pairs of eyes fixed on the small blonde holding a camera, who lowered it with a satisfied look. "For posterity," said Ai smoothly, and if they hadn't caught the brief glint of her smile as she turned away they would never have known it was there.  
  
Ran snickered, sitting up straight, and made an inexperienced attempt at petting Keeta - who suffered it with only a small squawk of complaint - before brushing herself off perfunctorily and standing up. "Well. Since I think we know what we're doing tonight, let's leave these things here and go find something to do around here until then, okay? This room is too cramped."  
  
"And you'll be back in it for an hourly exam in....thirty four minutes," Ai added. Shinichi groaned.  
  
"Breakfast?" said a voice from behind Ai; Agasa poked his head hopefully into the room, holding a donut. Without even looking, Ai's small hand shot up and took it from him. The gray-haired scientist sighed, crestfallen. "Poptarts, pastries and..." Ai dropped the donut into a trashbin by the door with a pointed  _thud._  "...No poptarts, no pastries. Rice and eggs? Toast? And coffee, decaffinated, of course." Agasa beamed at his guests with a virtuous I-never-touch-the-stuff smile before sliding his gaze up to Keeta. "Will your, ehrm, guest be joining us, Shin-chan?"  
  
"She'd like toast," he responded solemnly. "But no eggs, that'd be cannibalism." Beside him Ran snickered again and the five left the small room behind for breakfast.  
  
* * *  
  
"So... what about the Shonen Tantei? What're they like when you're one of them?"  
  
Breakfast was long over; Shinichi and Ran were sprawling in front of Agasa's widescreen TV, paying very little attention to whatever happened to be on the screen. It had been predicted (correctly) by Ai that her human guinea pig would be almost constantly hungry, fueling the process that kept his body from reverting back to its more condensed state. So, high-protein energy drink in hand and a bowlful of something resembling rodent chow ("It's granola. Just  _eat_  it, Kudo-kun") beside him, Shinichi crunched thoughtfully and considered the question.  
  
"Most of the time? Exasperating, loud, as distractable as a cat with a piece of string... and really bright. Terrifyingly bright." He sighed with contentment, stretching out his long legs and propping his feet on the table opposite. The young detective regarded those selfsame feet smugly;  _Couldn't do that this time yesterday,_  he thought, flexing his toes back and forth inside his old pair of housescuffs, fished out of Agasa's storage after so long.  _Or not without stretching, anyway._  "Some of that's because I've trained them, and yeah, I do recognize the irony. But a lot of it's because they're three intelligent, inquisitive kids. Mostly they're pretty typical, pretty normal-- they fight like cats in a bag, Mitsuhiko wants arcade games, Genta wants to stuff his face, Ayumi wants to boss us around... and that's good, that's how they ought to be. They need that normalcy to balance against the other stuff, because--" (he crunched another mouthful) "--most kids their age don't see dead bodies several times a month."   
  
Shinichi swallowed, shifting a little; his aches and pains were still very present and not quite ignorable. His skin felt weird, oversensitive and oddly thin; there were peculiar jolts of heat along his spine and hips every now and then, radiating outwards through muscle and bone. But oh, it was worth it, it was  _so_  worth it.   
  
Beside him, Ran grimaced. "I worry about that sometimes," she murmured, stealing a handful of his granola; she examined it for a second and then tossed it back into the bowl.  
  
"Me too. But little kids are resiliant, and  _these_  kids-- Murders still creep them out, but they're... enthusiastic about them. Creeps ME out. You know they take along packs of child-sized plastic gloves in their schoolbags now?"  
  
"You started them on that, Mister Tantei-sama," floated Ai's voice from around the corner where she sat reading. "That was  _your_  idea."  
  
"I know, and they took to it like ducks to water. Not that I mind, but..." Shinichi grinned in a mixture of pride and embarrassment. "You know what Ayumi said the other day? She watches that detective series, [ _Kiina - Impossible Crime,_](http://www.mysoju.com/kiina/) and she got annoyed because Haruse-san picked up a weapon at a crime-scene." He mimicked the little girl's voice:  _"'CONAN-kun, you told us NEVER to pick up guns or knives, she messed up the PRINTS.'_  It was funny. I think she wants to be Kiina when she grows up."  
  
"You watch it too," Ran pointed out, and her brow furrowed. "Um. Conan-kun does. I mean... I let him-- you-- stay up on Thursday nights..." Her voice trailed off as Shinichi snickered. "You know what I mean!"  
  
"Yes, Ran-neechan," he answered meekly. "--ow! Ow! Ran, quit it!"  
  
*  
  
"...so that was Kid the whole time?"  
  
"Well, it sure wasn't me. I was right there with you, remember? Short and annoying as ever."  
  
"I don't know about that." Ran frowned, remembering, as she stroked her thumb across the back of Shinichi's hand. "There was this one moment where Co... where you took off your glasses and your voice sounded serious, and you just looked...you looked so much like normal, and I swear, I was about two  _seconds_  from crying," and here she punched him in the shoulder, twice, and wiping the mistiness from her eyes while he winced from her, "And - and then it was Shinichi in the doorway again, all soaked from the rain, and..." Ran sighed, narrowing her expression. "And then he was gone again, and you were out on the step watching the sky, and all I could think was that I didn't  _know_  where you were, at that point. I wasn't sure that you'd left and I wasn't sure that you'd ever been there to start with. I was so confused that it hurt."  
  
 _Ooogh._  Guilt poked its pitchfork at Shinichi, a very unwelcome demon on his shoulder. "You know the first time I almost told you?" he asked her hastily, trying to think of ways to make Ran's smile return. "We were on the shinkansen and there was that thing with the bomb in the woman's briefcase-- you remember?" She nodded. "I started keeping track-- here, I'll show you." He dug into one pocket, pulling out the wallet he'd stuffed in there earlier; a thin bankbook was extracted, and Shinichi flipped it open to the yearly calendar. "Check out all the places I've circled; those were days I nearly came clean... and then didn't, for whatever reason." He made a face. "They were usually good reasons, but-- anyway."  
  
Ran perused the calendar, her fingertip tracing through the weeks and months since Shinichi had first been shrunk. She paused in the middle of spring, where two days in a row were circled. "What was this one?"  
  
Shinichi blushed furiously, taking the bankbook back. "Th-that was just a trip we went on, and--"  
  
Realization hit Ran like a hammer, and her eyes flew wide along with her squeak of shock, as she flushed to match Shinichi. "That was the onsen trip! Oh my--"  
  
" _To my credit,_ " Shinichi rushed to protest, edging away from Ran as quickly as he could while not spilling his food and drink, "I tried  _rather desperately_  to get out of that situation!"  
  
Ran fishmouthed at him, blinking frequently as though each blink shuffled through a mental stack of polaroid memories, all of which - far from fading with time - were now displayed in somewhat more lurid detail to her memory than when they were made. "I - ah - oh my god! Oh my --" Cheeks flaming red, Ran buried her face in her hands and began to shake. Against his better judgment, Shinichi reversed direction and edged closer again, setting aside the protein drink and granola bowl so he could set one hand on her shoulder hesitantly.  
  
"Ah...Ran? A-are you okay?"  
  
Ran brought her hands down and lifted her face, which was tracked with tears and still very red from embarrassment - and was split wide in a lunatic grin and silent mirth. Giggling uncontrollably, she tipped forward to lean against Shinichi's shoulder and let her laughter grow in volume, giddy and perhaps a little frantic.  
  
"I wondered --" More giggles. "Why little Conan-kun was  _sooooo_  desperate -- to bathe -- on the boys' side! I just wouuuuldn't -- take no for an answer, either!" A peal of laughter flattened her against the couch cushions and Shinichi's shoulder, tears rolling down her cheeks. "I really -- I really asked for this one, didn't I?"  
  
Shinichi sighed in unspeakable relief; she wasn't going to strangle him, she wasn't fleeing in outrage because he'd seen her naked.  _And it isn't like she didn't see_ _me_ _too--_  The thought stopped him in his tracks, suddenly twisting around in a way it wouldn't have if he'd still been Conan-sized, Conan-shaped...  
  
 _Oh my god she saw me stark naked too. Stark. Naked. Like_ _THAT_ _. All-- all--_ _ **OH MY GOD.**_  Totally mortified as only a healthy adult male can be, it was  _Shinichi_  who fled and spent a little quality time in the bathroom, hyperventilating and red-faced before he could calm down enough to return.  
  
*  
  
"...and you just push this...right here? Is that -- ohmygosh!" Startled, Ran jumped back in her seat, dropping the shoe she held. Shinichi caught it before it hit the ground, grinning.   
  
"Yeah. It's not gonna hurt you, Ran, the sparks are just a little energy spillage from the main generator." He tapped the toe of Conan's shoe with his palm, three times, and it settled into silence. "This is the only way I can kick things with any kind of force when I'm that little."  
  
"So the shoes...go with the belt, right?" Ran tapped the belt buckle that lay on the couch cushion beside her, careful to avoid the launch button on its side.  
  
"Right. Though, I really can kick anything that's handy with them; I just have the belt so that I always  _will_  have something handy." Shinichi shrugged, proud despite himself. With Agasa's help, he really had made the best of his situation as Conan, and being able to show off the tools of his trade, so to speak, to someone who would appreciate them was a rewarding thing in and of itself.  
  
 _Guess this is how Kid feels when he shows off for me,_  he realized, tucking the thought away until later.  
  
"So there's the glasses, and the belt, and the shoes," Ran summarized. "That still seems like it's missing something, though. You have a weapon for distance, if someone's far away from you; but what if someone gets too close? You throw yourself into all sorts of crazy situations without even thinking about it, but Shinichi, when you're like that you're still just a kid! And somebody might hurt you..." Wrapping her arms across her chest, Ran leaned into the cushions, frowning as she studied the pieces of Conan's equipment in front of her. "I'm going to worry about you  _so much_  now, you know that? Even more than I used to. Because now it's not just Conan-kun that I'll be worrying about, it's Shinichi, also."  
  
He studied the shoes; it was easier than looking her in the face as he answered. "Can't help it, Ran," Shinichi answered unhappily, feeling his conversation with Kid from the Italian restaurant echoing in the words. "I know. I've been shot, knocked out, shoved off balconies, almost stabbed... I know." The scar from his bullet-wound hadn't remained its original size; it had stretched along with his skin, becoming a jagged splash of whitish tissue, more alarming than it had ever looked in its more diminutive form, and Ran had seen it - and been upset by it - when Ai took measurements for his hourly checkups.  
  
"I'm sorry. I'll do my best not to get hurt... but you know I won't quit. Can't." Shinichi drew in a breath, blew it out in a sigh. "And hey, better me than one of the Shonen Tantei, right? That's why Agasa won't make shoes for  _them._ " From the other side of the room, the Professor nodded soberly.  
  
Ran sighed, stroking her hair back from her face with one hand. "Still. I just wish you had something...something more direct, you know? Just in case you get in a pinch."  
  
"Well, I have the locator chip in my glasses, so Agasa and Ai could find me if they needed to; and the Shonen Tantei radio badge, too." Ran gave him a Look, and he wilted. "Yeah, I know what you mean."  
  
Agasa cleared his throat, a certain warning light in his eyes; and Shinichi sighed. "--okay," he conceded to the older man's unspoken hint. "Just a second." A minute's rummaging around among his belongings in the back bedroom, and a certain red bowtie lay on the coffeetable along with a watch. "There's these. You're maybe not going to be so happy about them, but I said I'd explain."  
  
"Shinichi..." Ran's tone was warning enough. "What are these?"  
  
"Ahem." Somewhat nervously, he picked up the bowtie and flipped it over, revealing the dials on the back. He adjusted them, turned the device on, then held the bowtie up in front of Ran's mouth. "Say something."  
  
"Shinichi, wha-- _oh my god._ " Ran's suspicion was replaced by complete shock, and she took the bowtie from Shinichi with careful hands. "How the--"  
  
He smiled wryly, daring so far as to wrap one arm around Ran's shoulders so he could reach the bowtie's controls on both sides. "That setting's my favorite. It's the one I used second-most," he explained, tweaking the dials as he talked. His cheek was companionably close to Ran's, and the heat from her gentle blush made him smile. Across the room, Agasa was abruptly very busy with a magazine. "That one's how I could call you with my own voice every once in a while. There's a phone booth outside your dad's agency..." At Ran's gasp, he chuckled. "Yeah. Hmm, here's another one you might like. Try it."  
  
Ran held the bow up to her mouth and, with a glance of uncertainty at Shinichi, spoke nonsense into the microphone. It came out the other side with the nasal, sharp tones of Suzuki Sonoko, and despite herself, Ran giggled with surprise. "Oh wow! Can it do my voice, too?"  
  
Shinichi took the bow back, detangling himself from Ran, and after a brief adjustment, held it up. "Of course it can, Ran-chan," he said. The creepifying quality of hearing her own name  _in_  her own voice made Ran shiver, wide-eyed.  
  
"This is incredible! Agasa-sensei, did you make this?" she asked, and the scientist looked up from his reading.  
  
"Ah, yes, I did," he said, nodding, "Though Shin-chan had to perform the calibration, to get all the voices right. It's an analog setting, so there's a lot of fiddle room."  
  
Ran took the bowtie back, speaking into it as she twirled the dials. "Ah la la la la la la," she sang, giggling as she heard her voice travel the vocal spectrum, from obaachan to toddler, woman to man. Watching her, Shinchi smiled with fondness, and glanced across the room at Agasa.  
  
"Professor, if you wouldn't mind...?"  
  
"Ah, no problem at all, Shinichi, just make sure --"  
  
"I'll tell her," Shinichi promised, waving Agasa on. When he'd gone, Ran looked from the doorway to Shinichi.  
  
"Tell me what?" Some of the suspicion had come back into her eyes, and Shinichi reached across to smooth out her frowning brows with his thumb.  
  
"Ah le le," he murmured, "Don't make that face, Ran. You just looked so cute when you were singing at the bowtie..."  
  
Ran flushed a little, wagging the device at him warningly. "I was just playing with it! You don't have to--"  
  
"I know," Shinichi smiled, closing his hand around hers, bowtie and all, as he leaned in to kiss her again. When they finally pulled apart, Shinichi breathless, Ran smug, her expression was querulous.  
  
"What was that for?"  
  
"Just because," Shinichi explained, kissing her again briefly. "I never thought I'd be able to - to tell you all of this, and here we are, and I've told you nearly everything, and we're  _playing_  with my bowtie. I just --" He shook his head, voice soft and awed. "I was starting to think I'd never get to be like this with you again. Or that if I ever did tell you, you'd never want to speak to me again for lying to you."  
  
Ran grinned. "Shi-ni-chi," she sang, "You baka. I wouldn't stop speaking to you just because you lied to me for a whole year, left me waiting with absolutely no explanation and no reassurance that you were okay, that things were going okay with your case, that you would ever be back, or even what your case was  _about_ , and all the while were running around perfectly safe under my nose, giving me headaches from having to constantly fish you out of crime scenes and murder situations, freeloading on Tousan and myself for food and bed, leading other legitimately small children into a life of danger and proper criminal procedure...." Ran's smile was clear as sunshine, which in Shinichi's opinion, made her all the more scary.  
  
"W-well that's good to know?" he ventured. Ran's eyes twinkled.  
  
"Isn't it? I bet you're also going to  _love_  the new bedtime that I'm going to give Conan...and the curfew...and the chores..."  
  
".....THAT IS SO UNFAIR."  
  
"Really?" She held up the bowtie meaningfully. "Phonecalls.  _Lots of phonecalls._  Do I really need to say anything else? Or would you like me to go through each one of them? I keep lists too." Her smile could have graced a plaster saint... or been used to break bricks. Shinichi cast around rather desperately for something, practically anything, a new subject--  
  
 _Oh. Oh yeah--_  "Um... here, can I see that for a sec? I didn't-- I mean, there's-- you can create new settings, program them in. Like this." Hoping to provide something distractable enough (and keep himself at least a  _little_  ways out of the doghouse), Shinichi clicked a few tiny controls on the bowtie's settings before turning the dial again. It really was a marvel of miniature engineering... "Watch this," he murmured, scaling it to a setting he'd never had opportunity to try, or at least not in public. "Ahem. Professor? I believe we need to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow."  
  
Shinichi's altered tones, childishly light and feminine though in a lower register than one might expect, had their results: Ai's head popped up like a meerkat's from where she had curled up with her laptop on one of the Professor's enormous chairs. For a moment she stared indignantly, her usual dignity slipping entirely. Then, deadpan:  
  
 _"Extra_  blood tests in twenty minutes. And possibly a core temperature reading." Her head vanished behind the chair back, leaving the other two to digest this.  
  
Shinichi snorted. "As if." He fiddled with the settings again, trying for something he'd considered earlier but had yet to try out. "Ah... no, not right... testing, testing, testing... noooooo..... testing... OH yeah." His laugh, a little softer and more breathy than usual, modulated into a careful, controlled tenor.   
  
"Ladies and gentlemen --  _showtime!"_  And he laughed again. It wasn't quite right, but it was pretty close, all things considered. Beside him, Ran stiffened slightly. "Here, want to try?"  
  
She took the device a little dubiously, considering her earlier enthusiasm; it perched in her fingers like a butterfly, thin antennae upraised. "We still need to talk about him, don't we," Ran murmured, and the peculiar mismatch of Kid's voice and her questioning eyes made most of the laughter drain out of Shinichi's face. Around went the dial, tiny marks ticking past the pointer; it was easier for her to calibrate it than for Shinichi now-- his large fingers found the delicate controls a little difficult to manipulate.  
  
"How long've you been friends?" she asked softly in Kisaki Eri's voice, modulating the tone out and away from her mother's voice into something new and unfamiliar. "I didn't expect that. I remember the time you chased him-- I mean, you, like--" Ran waved her free hand vaguely; the dial clicked again. "Something about helicopters and a clock and diamonds; you were pretty useless at school for  _days,_  and you kept doodling little drawings of hangliders on your schoolwork. Then nothing for a long time until..." the hand dropped, flat out at a meter above ground even as the young woman's voice spiraled down in tone with it to match Mouri Kogoro's. Shinichi winced, but nodded.  
  
"That first time, Nakamori-keibu didn't want you there; I remember that too." Fingers moved behind the bowtie again, nails sliding the secondary control over into a higher register again, though still in the male range;  _clickclickclickCLACK,_  and now the preset of Heiji's voice without his usual Kansai dialect replaced the Sleeping Detective's raspy growl. "And you never... Conan never seemed interested in any other thief, just Kaitou Kid-san." The honorific came off as distinctly strange; with a shock, Shinichi realized that he'd never used it even once.  
  
'Kid-san'. It sounded... odd. Unaccustomed. Wrong, like calling Ran 'Mouri-san' would. What did that say about him?  
  
"Shinichi? I do want to hear about your, um, about... that 'long story' and all, but first-- what's your watch do?"  
  
 _ **Uh**_ _-oh..._  
  
From the other side of the room, Ai snickered, then poked her head up over the top of the chair she was sitting in. She was probably standing on her tiptoes to do so, but from Shinichi's perspective, she looked like nothing less menacing than a surfacing shark. "Very nice, Mouri-san," Ai chuckled, resting her chin on her hands across the back of the chair. "That's another one of the Professor's little toys, isn't it, Shinichi?" Damage done, she receded back into her seat, leaving Shinichi sweating bullets on the couch beside Ran.  
  
"Well, it, ah," he began, then as Ran picked up the watch itself and began to poke at its sides: " **Don't--!**  Ah." Gathering it carefully from her hands, he sheepishly faced her extremely suspicious expression. "Ahm. I can explain."  
  
She gave him a Look. "Don't tell me, it's some sort of Secret Decoder Ring-- um, watch." At his expression, Ran's own grew even more deeply suspicious. "Shinichi? If you were Conan right now I'd wonder what you'd broken in the kitchen.  _Talk."_  
  
Very gently he depressed the trigger on the side-- not the firing mechanism, but the little one that flipped the crosshairs-screen into place. "It's a... gun, sort of. Fires anesthetic darts; they induce sleep almost immediately. Very, very deep sleep." He sighed. "Like... what your father goes into, when he solves cases."  
  
Ran blinked, tension lines appearing between her eyes. "...You know. I had this instinct that you were somehow to blame for Dad going crazy...well, crazier than before...but I didn't think you would be quite so  _directly_  at-fault as this." She sighed, plucking the watch from his fingers, and held it up with one hand, turning and aiming it with the other. "So how'd I fire? Just this little button right heeeeeere...?" She lowered the crosshairs-screen, putting the watch and her hands in her lap, and smiled tiredly at Shinichi.  
  
"Don't take this the wrong way, Shinichi, because I don't even have words for how happy I am to have you back, but you  _really_  are a pain, you know that? At any size."  
  
Shinichi snickered, grinning despite himself, and Ran grinned back, despite herself. "I could remind you what Holmes said about irritants," Shinichi offered brightly, and ducked away from Ran's quick swipe at his head.  
  
"You're a loo--ooh, oh. Mnn." The girl drooped where she sat, falling against Shinichi's shoulder; he caught her with alarm, shaking her in panic before he realized what must have happened.  
  
Sure enough, in Ran's lap, a tiny silver dart, not even fully fired out of the watch's air-pressure channel, was embedded into her thigh.  _She must have knocked the button when she tried to hit me,_  Shinichi sighed. "Well, shit."  
  
Ai popped up again, like a meerkat with a barracuda's smile. "You could always--"  
  
"Next one's aimed at you," Shinichi warned her, setting the watch aside. Ai receded behind her chair again, and Shinichi shifted on the sofa, stretching his legs out lengthwise and pulling Ran into his lap, pillowing her head on his chest. "Can we do this hour's exam in here, Haibara?" Shinichi asked after a few moments, angling his arms to better support Ran as she slept.  
  
Ai peeked out from behind her chair again, this time to the side; after studying the pair on the couch for a moment, she sighed and settled back into place; the snap of a newspaper being straightened out was her only reply.  
  
"Thanks, Ai," Shinichi murmured, resting his head against the back of the couch. He might as well get some sleep too... because, once awake again, he knew Ran wouldn't waste the precious few hours she had left with him on  _sleep_  if she had a choice about it.  _Long night for us, then,_  Shinichi mused, as he settled in comfortably, feeling the soft rise and fall of Ran's breathing against his own.  _That's okay with me._  
  
*  
  
The rest of the afternoon passed in a strangly relaxed fashion. For once, there was no crisis-- no impending or past murder, theft or other crime, no investigation or imposture to keep up, no mystery to be solved other than that of the human body and two people who had a lot of catching up to do. Chinese take-out (with extra portions to keep Shinichi's appetite assuaged) took care of lunch, somewhat to Ai's annoyance and everyone else's gratification-- you could only eat so much granola. Ran woke up from her little nap with a fortunately-clear memory of bumping the watch's trigger herself, thus sparing Shinichi further damage; medical checks were completed, data compiled, and Ai pronounced herself satisfied that the two could go on their outing without Shinichi collapsing into a heap of preadolescence.  
  
"You'll probably experience more joint pains," she added clinically, capping her pen. "If they get too severe... no, never mind; I won't insult your intelligence by requesting that you come back immediately, because you won't, will you?" With that snipe, a little of Ai's sardonic edge smoothed off just a little; her eyes were actually slightly anxious as she shuffled through her paperwork. "It's very possible that the end-time will fluctuate severely, Kudo-kun. I don't really like this low-level fever that you've been running, or your blood-test results; but it's not like we live in a perfect world, ne? If the process begins to reverse itself, I'm sure you'll be in capable hands." With that cryptic utterance, the diminutive blonde gave him one last searching glance before going back to her own affairs.  
  
And  _that_  left Ran and Shinichi free to investigate-- and put to use-- Kid's gift.  
  
*  
  
Kid had been cautious when creating Shinichi's costume. Though the differences between their faces were significant enough to those who knew them, from a distance, or at an angle, they were close enough to be brothers - especially when examined in a hurry. And without the technology - or training - to change his voice without the use of the bowtie (there were some trade secrets Kid wasn't yet prepared to share with his new friend), Shinichi was going to sound like Shinichi, and that was that. In the end, it was probably better for Ran's sake that he did; every moment, Kid knew, was going to be precious to her, and while taking Shinichi away by degrees was unavoidable if the date was to happen, leaving the detective's voice in place, he hoped, would soothe her.  
  
The clothes, much more casual than Shinichi's normal fare, and the shoes, much more beat up, would be the man's primary line of deception. The shoes, fitted internally to as close of a guess to Shinichi's real foot size as Kid had been able to gather during his time in the Kudo mansion, were externally a full size bigger, and possessed a tread pattern that Kid had double checked was very dissimilar to every remaining pair of Shinichi's shoes that he'd been able to find in the mansion's storage. The hair dye would work with Shinichi's natural coloring, rather than against it, tinting it darker in convincingly gradiated ways. It would also gum up his hair at the roots, where the heat of his skin would keep the dye from fully drying out. This would make unruly the detective's whole head of hair, disguising the untameable cowlick that was one of his most distinctive characteristics - and doing so without requiring dependence on a hat, a flimsy defense at best.  
  
Knowing Shinichi had no experience with contact lenses, Kid had forgone those; it was unfortunate that the distinctive blue eyes, a trait not shared by many, couldn't be hidden, but Kid had instead chosen the colors of Shinichi's wardrobe to disguise them. Rich reds and browns would bring up the scant earthy tones in Shinichi's blue eyes, so much more pale than Kid's own, and would give them the appearance of greyness. Every little bit counted.  
  
As for the makeup and prosthetics...Kid was most nervous about those. It took skill to convincingly apply prosthetics that effectively changed a person's face shape, and skill to wear them; rather than challenge the detective and take the chance he would fail in a public way, Kid had instead sent Shinichi simple prosthetic additions, which would round his jaw, slightly change the shape of his nose and cheekbones. Concealing the detective's profile was important, and for that, the jaw prosthetics would have to do; Kid hoped that with the casual clothing, looser and more layered than Shinichi usually wore, the detective would convincingly look thirty pounds heavier. Not a lot, but significant enough to support the illusion that Kid was trying to weave. Every disguise was a matter of layering, little by little. Big gestures tended to be more transparent than little tweaks. Working  _with_  your body's strengths and weaknesses was much more effective than trying to counteract them, especially at a beginner level.  
  
And oh, was this a beginner level. Kid had frowned as he packed the disguise up, adjusting things here and there, switching out one color of makeup for a related shade on impulse. "Shinichi, you are a  _shitty_  liar," Kid grumbled, slipping the hair blacking into the heel of one shoe. "Please, Benten, let him figure out how to lie for _one_  night."  
  
The makeup that Kid included was, as the rest of the disguise, subtle. By following the instructions provided, Shinichi would be able to smooth out the hollows of his cheeks, gently change the hue of his skin, add wrinkles here, smooth them out there. A little eyeshadow - subtle enough that it wouldn't look as anything other than a change in his skintone to careful observation - would help the greying-out of his eyes. And dark powder in his eyebrows would thicken and lower them, giving the illusion of a heavier, lower brow line. When the finished product was done... hopefully...  
  
He wouldn't recognize himself.  
  
*  
  
Shinichi stared at himself in the mirror. The fact that he could feel Ran's hand on his shoulder through his jacket, and could see her holding the same pose in the reflected image, was one of the few clues to which he could cling to reassure himself that the reflection wasn't playing tricks on him.  
  
 _I look like my older brother, if I had an older brother. Or a cousin. Or... Kuroba, a few years and a bit of junk-food down the line-- no, not Kuroba, not Kid either. Maybe an uncle?_  
  
"You look a little like your tousan's college photos," said Ran, poking a cheekbone very cautiously. "Is there a moustache in the kit?"  
  
"No, and good thing," Shinichi answered, adjusting the borrowed clothing, "It'd probably make me sneeze all night."  
  
Ran snickered. "Well, you look great. What's your name?"  
  
"Shinich--" He stopped. "Oh. Right."  
  
Ran laughed, a beautiful sound that nearly distracted Shinichi from their current conversation. "Well we're going to have to make one up for you. Which reminds me, where did you get Conan's name from?" She poked through the implements of Shinichi's disguise, checking to make sure they hadn't missed anything; a moment later, she held up the chapstick with a smile. "Forgot this! Let's see what the note....oh. Um. Well."  
  
 _Makeup, latex, and the like aren't very tasty, and suck moisture out of your skin. Keep a layer of this on to keep your lips from drying out...and to save Mouri-san's._  
  
Shinichi grinned to himself. Surprisingly practical, Kid was; something that didn't usually occur to you in the aftermath following a heist, when you were too busy cursing and fishing confetti out of your underwear. But yes, he was. The teenager used the chapstick without comment and tucked it discreetly into a pocket while Ran blushed. "Hirai Taro," he said out loud, stomping his feet in the unfamiliar shoes to get the feel.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"I took my-- Conan's-- name from a couple of books on the shelf next to me the first time you asked," he explained, stretching his arms and shrugging; padding settled into place and he fought the desire to sneeze (how the hell did Kid stand this sort of thing on a regular basis?) "I was  _paralyzed;_  you had me scared to death, you know that? Anyway, Arthur Conan Doyle and Edogawa Ranpo... but that last one, though, it's a pseudonym, a play on 'Edgar Allen Poe'-- the author's actual name was Hirai Taro." Shinichi sketched a formal bow in Ran's direction. "Pleased to meet you, Mouri-san. Would you do me the honor of going to the movies with me this evening? I've got free tickets." He waggled his darkened eyebrows.  
  
Ran grinned, playing coy. "Oh, I don't know, Hirai-san, I'm not in the habit of going on dates with  _strange_  men I barely know," she dissembled, eyes shining in a smile that didn't match her fake expression of wariness. "How do I know you just won't whisk me off into insane adventures, or disappear right before my eyes?"  
  
"I'm afraid you don't," Shinichi returned, "You'll just have to trust me."  
  
"Hmm. Could be worse," she opined philosophically. "I mean, you're a writer, right? You could be a detective. My kaasan once told me  _never_  to get involved with detectives; she claims that they're lazy, untrustworthy and immature. Especially immature." Dimples peeked out of either side of her smile before Ran smothered it back to seriousness. "You'll get me home on time, though, right? Before you turn into a, a, a pumpkin... or a gradeschooler, or even a d--"  
  
"Right. I promise," Shinichi said fervently. The very idea of shrinking in a public place was enough to make him sweat bullets.  _Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Once. The_ _ **first**_ _time._  
  
"Then let's go," Ran decided, saucily holding out  _her_  arm for him to take. Laughing, he did so, but only used it as a lever to spin her around into his embrace and look at her. Every inch of the faith, ease, and confidence that she was showing him at that moment existed as a stark and definitive contrast to the fears of guns and medicines that he'd tried to protect her from, even after everything that she'd been told in the last twenty-four hours. Shinichi felt his throat tighten.  
  
"Ran, do I even deserve you?"  
  
A softness touched her eyes for a split second, quickly replaced by the playfulness that had been there before. "Nope! Which is why you have me." And with that, she tugged him away, waving assurances and goodbyes to Ai and Agasa as she shoved Shinichi out the door.  
  
* * *


	13. "Caffeine, early, puzzlebox"

_  
__Theme music:_ _"Rescued" by Jack's Mannequin_ _  
_ _Warnings for a bit of gruesomeness._  
  
*  
  
The movie theater was familiar to both of them - nearest to their houses and their school, it was the one they'd always favored in the past. Now Shinichi held the door open for Ran, grinning as he did so. She beamed back, sharing the private glee of his proper height and size just between the two of them. As the rest of the patrons glanced knowingly at them -  _lovebirds,_  their eyes said - Ran and Shinichi filed into line to exchange their passes for tickets and snacks. Though he'd expected a problem - old paranoia died hard - the exchange was made without a hitch, and the pair made their way in to the theater easily.  
  
"Is it just me, or are you expecting...um,  _him_ , to pop out of the walls somewhere around here?" Ran asked, as they navigated the maze of back corridors that would lead them to their assigned screen (screen number 42, as it happened). Shinichi snickered, shaking his head as answer, and was saved from having to answer by the appearance of their theater doors.  
  
 _And she doesn't even know the man like I do,_  Shinichi considered wryly.  _If she did she'd probably be carrying a can of RAID or something._  He snickered as the image in his mind mutated. Abruptly, he imagined a little - or not so little - white cat, troublesome as anything, with a bob tail and a top hat, clambered up onto a high bookshelf (or similar), facing off against a determined Ran armed with a water spray bottle and an exasperated smile.  
  
 _They_ _would_ _get along well, wouldn't they?_  he realized, recognizing the affection in the allegorical scene, and the thought recalled an earlier emotional suffusion:  
  
 _Warm._  
  
Preoccupied, Shinichi dismissed that thought (carefully folding it up beside the memories of Ran's kisses) for later perusal, focusing on helping Ran into her seat ("I'm okay, Sh--Hirai-san, but thank you"), settling in himself, and enjoying the film.  
  
* * *  
  
The movie'd probably been pretty good. Shinichi'd have to check later on, he supposed, because frankly he hadn't much idea about what the plot had involved. Or who the characters had been. Or, well, what the title was...  
  
They'd had a lot of catching up to do. Mostly this hadn't involved much talking, and the movie had passed in a happy blur. They'd probably eaten popcorn-- he had a definite memory of Ran laughing and managing to toss a kernel down his shirt, but when he'd tried to do the same thing in return she'd given him a Look. It hadn't been a warning, it had been a prediction, and Shinichi had answered it with his best innocent grin. Ran had tsked at him, then cuddled close... with her hand on the bag of popcorn, her cheeks pink, a smug little smile on her face.  
  
She'd looked just beautiful. It'd been a  _GREAT_  evening, and it was only getting started.  
  
Outside on the sidewalk, stretching his hands high above his head, Shinichi looked over at Ran with a smile. "Where do you think we should go next? There's an ice cream place on the other side of the plaza," he suggested.   
  
An artfully designed relaxation area opened up before them, directly across from the theater's doors. Small shops ringed flagstone paths, which themselves bordered greenery and a modest fountain in the center of the little plaza. Lights from under the water made the rivulets of liquid glow as they splashed and cascaded through the fountain's several levels, and footlights along the edge of each plaza, plus standing lamplights reminiscent of old Europe, gave the whole area an artificially bohemian feel. Though it was an illusion, neither Shinichi nor Ran minded. It was pretty, and that was enough.  
  
"I don't know, it's kind of chilly for ice cream," Ran mused, leading the way to a small space of unclaimed territory on one of the raised planters' edges. She hopped up onto the ledge, swinging her feet against the wall below her, and Shinichi stood beside her amiably. The crowd, just released from the cinema, was especially thick; in the next fifteen minutes, the detective estimated, only the idlest of the group would remain, himself and Ran among them. Then there'd be more room to move around, and maybe he could talk Ran into making wishes in the fountain with him.  
  
He glanced at the sky; the clouds from earlier had thinned out, and stars were showing above Beika's streetlights. A beautiful night, a perfect evening, a good (if exhausting) day, one in a... Shinichi calculated; one in about 270, really. Too long.  
  
"Hot chocolate?" he asked, hands in pockets, watching Ran's profile as the fountain splashed behind her; tiny droplets misted the air and caught the lights like tiny airborn diamonds. It  _was_  chilly, and he considered maybe scooting up beside her-- just to conserve warmth, of course. It was just as he'd crossed the point of passing off the gesture as just a readjustment, when his arm was extended and curved behind her, but not yet securely wrapped around her shoulders, that the cry - no, the _caroling_  - came.  
  
"O~niiiii~chaaaaaan~!" The voice was piercing, sharp, and clear - it probably carried for a quarter kilometer. It wasn't particularly grating, but it  _was_  attention-grabbing, and every. single. person. in the plaza turned to see where it had come from.  
  
Shinichi did not. "Oh for the love of."  
  
Ran reached over her shoulder, grabbed his arm, and tugged it the rest of the way down, wrapping his hand around her arm even as she poked him with her free hand. "What...Shi--Hirai-san, what is it?"  
  
Shinichi leveled a much-put-upon look at her. "I really don't know, but I know it's going to be trouble."  
  
Soon the voice's source came clear - a small girl in muddy boots and without much aplomb at all, barreling straight for her brother on the other side of the plaza. As she shrieked past, her voice eventually fading like a doppler wail, Shinichi and Ran followed her departure with somewhat boggled expressions. Therefore, they were _completely_  taken aback by the soft, husky voice that suddenly spoke, calm and matter-of-factly located directly behind their shoulders, just between their heads.  
  
"Nii-chan, you should really say something to that child's mother. She's despicably over-caffinated."  
  
"Holy---!"  
  
The young man behind them, crouching in the center of the planter on which Ran had perched herself, simply closed his eyes and smiled blithely at the two of them. Shinichi had been completely caught off-guard, and if it'd been possible to jump out of his skin, he might have done so; from a distance of a meter or so away, he stared in fading panic, heart beating rabbit-quick, at the man crouched behind Ran, who seemed to have the situation well-in-hand.  
  
"Nii-chan, who's your lovely date? And could she stop - ahgmmm. - strangling me?"  
  
"Ran, Ran, I think -- I think it's okay," Shinichi managed finally, stepping forward to lay one hand on her shoulder; despite his assurances, Ran kept a firm grip on the fistful of fabric she had grasped at the young man's collar. The full-arm torque that she'd put on the cloth meant that not only was her victim not getting away anytime soon, she had also cinched the opening of his layered t-shirts' collars such that he was having some difficulty breathing.  
  
"Ran, really, let go of him," Shinichi insisted, studying the other man's eyes very carefully. "We know him."  
  
The young man smiled again, one of those irritatingly angelic affairs with closed eyes and an unscratchable panache.  _Or poker face,_  Shinichi thought wryly. Meanwhile, their guest was climbing down from the planter to stand beside Ran, who had yet to let go of his collar, but had at least reduced the torque on his shirt so he could breathe.  
  
"Delightful to meet you," he said, executing a shallow bow without taking his eyes off of Ran. "I'm Hirai-san, Taro's younger brother. Hirai Shigeki."  
  
 _Shigeki - 'irritation'._  Shinichi laughed to himself, grinning at their new companion.  _Not subtle at all, Kid._  Kid had chosen a disguise very similar indeed to Shinichi's, and - ironically - the brotherly resemblance that their true faces shared was echoed even more strongly in the pair of disguises. With the same lowered brows and altered jawline as Shinichi, Kid had taken his personal disguise a few notches further, adding grey contacts, additional prosthetics, and what were surely padded body cushions, in order to create the flawless image of Hirai Taro's younger brother. Where "Taro" was past the peak of youth, solidly standing in the territory of adulthood in both bearing and appearance, "Shigeki" still had to cross that peak of maturity, and had about him the roundness and plumpness associated with an eighteen-year-old not yet acquired of his final growth spurt. It was, frankly, a brilliant complement to Shinichi's costume - flawless in its own right, and the perfect alibi to support the detective's own. And it provided a prepackaged dynamic between the pair, a joking, teasing, brotherly affection that was easy to intuit and play off of.  
  
 _Not that far from our usual fare,_  Shinichi thought, smiling at Kid with true warmth.  _You're insane, but it's good to see you._  
  
"This is Mouri Ran, 'Geki." Kid's brow lifted as he recognized Shinichi's pun, and Shinichi fought back a laugh again.  _'Drama' suits you as a nickname, 'Geki'-chan._ Meanwhile, Kid and Ran were exchanging pleasantries.  
  
"I can't believe how softly you snuck up on us," Ran was saying, a light of challenge in her eyes that hadn't made up its mind whether to be friendly or not. "It's almost like you're used to running about on high places."  
  
Kid's eyes sparkled beneath his makeup and contacts. "Nothing but a bit of misdirection, Mouri-san. Simply employ the right hints at the right time, and anyone can be a magician."  
  
"Clearly," Shinichi offered, "Or else you'd never have gotten within three meters of Ran. She's a Karate champion, you know." He waggled his eyebrows at her, and she swatted his hair perfunctorily, turning her attention to Kid.  
  
"Thank you for coming out tonight, Shigeki-san," Ran said with sincerity, "I'm very glad we can all be together like this tonight."  
  
'Shegeki-san' cocked his head to one side a bit. "Likewise," he said cheerfully. "I did want to wait until you'd finished with the movie, though. Did you have a good time?" His grin had nothing of artifice about it and quite a lot of deviltry.  
  
"Absolutely." 'Taro' matched him grin for grin.  
  
"Oh, really? Then you can tell your little brother  _all_  about the plot and the music and that interesting little twist they put in at the end, can't you?" He did everything short of bat his eyes. "I understand they really broke some new ground with this flick-- fantastic casting, award-winning screenplay, beautiful sets, innovative special effects-- no, no, go ahead, tell me. At length. You DID pay attention, didn't you?" Beaming with innocent interest, the other cranked the grin up a notch and leaned back against the planter, all ears. "I'm liiiiistening..."  
  
"Uh." Red to his artificially-altered hairline, Shinichi gave his 'little brother' a slightly desperate look; beside him, Ran had flushed strawberry-pink.   
  
Shigeki peered closer at the both of them, smiling wickedly. "You're turning red! You are!"  
  
"No I'm not! It's - it's the sunset," Shinichi stammered, blushing even further; beside him, Ran had looked up sharply, her wide eyed gaze holding something of amusement in it, too.  
  
 _Misdirection, right--_  "Hot chocolate! We were talking about getting some hot chocolate-- My treat?"  
  
'Geki's' grin became beatific. "Oooh, chocolate! Caffeine  _and_  sugar. Lead on."  
  
Now questioning the wisdom of his suggestion, Shinichi did so.  
  
*  
  
"I mean really," Kid was saying, gesturing pointedly with his biscotti across the table at his companions, both of whom were looking a little overcome by the thief's enthusiasm. "Yes, there's arguments to both sides of the debate, of course. But have you ever thought about that one in the  _technical_  sense? Of all things, why use _caterpillars?_ "  
  
"Why...indeed," Shinichi managed, trying to blink away the stunned-with-a-two-by-four expression he was wearing. Beside him, Ran began giggling, lifting her free hand to cover her mouth politely. Kid popped up one eyebrow in query ( _His face must be made out of_ _rubber_ _, that's the only explanation,_  Shinichi decided) and wrapped his lips around the green straw of his hot chocolate. Around them, the soft hum of the coffee shop gave more than a passing similarity to any other busy public place, and its ubiquitousness - enforced by the fact that it was a chain establishment, of a brand that many more bohemian coffee drinkers considered a scourge upon the earth - was a comfort to the trio. Yet for understandable reasons, none of them were completely relaxed.  
  
 _Well._  Shinichi watched their tablemate as the other listened to Ran. He didn't so much sit as  _hover_  in his chair, tethered only tenuously to its seat by that inconvenient thing that most people called 'gravity' and Shinichi would guess Kid had renamed "red tape." Not a moment went by that he wasn't shifting, fidgeting, or twitching in place.  _'At ease' might be a more accurate term than 'relaxed,'_  Shinichi considered.  _Kid is many things, but one thing he's surely_  not  _is 'relaxed.'_  The detective frowned, comparing Kid's current behavior to their meetings in weeks past.  _But how much of what I'm seeing right now is Kid, how much is the costume...and how much is Kuroba?_  
  
"I'm going to go for refills," Shinichi said, gently interrupting Kid's flow of monologue. Ran smiled appreciatively at Shinichi as the detective stood, collecting cups. "Do either of you want more?"  
  
"I'll have some," Ran said, "No cream on mine, please."  
  
Kid waved the offer aside gently. "No thanks," he said, displaying his cup - which, startlingly, was still half full from his first serving of hot chocolate. "I'm good." Then, to Ran: "Mouri-san, I'm just asking you to consider this. Obviously, chinchillas have a greater fur capacity per animal, are generally easier to interact with - even if they do tend to nibble one's fingers a bit overmuch - and they're certainly not as, ahm,  _flattenable_  as caterpillars. So why hasn't the industry switched over yet?" He sat back, a disappointed and distressed expression on his face, and Ran found herself nodding blankly at him.  
  
"Indeed, Hirai-san, it's just...illogical."  
  
Shinichi rolled his eyes.  _Something's illogical, and I don't think it goes any further than the inside of that nutjob's head._  Not that he should be surprised - they  _were_ dealing with an internationally wanted jewel thief with a penchant for daredeviltry.  _I should get him a caterpillar for Christmas, or something._  
  
The thought made Shinichi pause, and the clerk at the counter had to repeat his question. "No cream on this one, right, sir?"  
  
"Aaah, right. No cream," Shinichi confirmed, reviewing his previous thought. Getting Kid a present at Christmas... he really was losing it.  
  
The chocolate sloshed slightly on his wrist as he caught the cups up, scalding it; he swore beneath his breath and mopped at the minor burn with a napkin before toting both his own and Ran's back to the table. As Shinichi sat the two down (interrupting Kid being incredibly enthusiastic over... cellphone charms? Or livestock? Or something?), he blinked hard for a moment, shaking his head.  
  
"Sh-- Hirai-san? Something wrong?" Ran touched the back of his hand just above the burn, concern furrowing between her brows. Kid had paused, chin resting on the palm of one hand, disguised eyes fixed enquiringly on the other's face.  
  
"Nothing, just..." He shrugged, refusing to let the faint wash of lethargy interfere; the evening was just too good. "Kind of tired. It's okay," Shinichi added with a reassuring smile. "I don't turn into a pumpkin until midnight."  
  
Geki raised an eyebrow at his 'brother,' then went back to calmly sipping his hot chocolate. "A pumpkin? We could make pie out of that. It would be better than [the alternative](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taro), at least. That would be kind of gross." Shinichi groaned at the horrible pun and Ran's own eyebrows went from concern into an attempt to hide in her hair.  
  
She watched them over her cup for a few moments, taking a long sip. "You two are... I was going to say 'horribly alike', but that's not really true. You're more like a cat and a dog making noise at each other through a fence." She snickered behind her cup, brushing a long strand of hair out of the way and tucking it behind one ear. "Take away the fence and you've either got a fight on your hands or a couple of friends."  
  
Shinichi blinked; that was one way to look at it, he supposed.  
  
"Depends on who's watching when the fence goes away," Kid murmured, low enough that he almost could have been talking to himself. Seeming to come to a decision, he stood and tapped the tabletop lightly, looking from one to the other. "I'm going to go stretch my legs. I'll be back in a few minutes." He tossed a glance in Shinichi's direction as he went, pairing it with a smile.  _This'll give her a chance to process this whole idea without being rude in front of me. Don't worry._  
  
Ran looked worried again as 'Taro's little brother' slipped away, moving easily through the thinning crowd. "Did I say something wrong?" She sat her cup down onto their table with a faint click. "He's  _nothing_  like I would've expected... and I keep thinking, shouldn't I be upset? Shouldn't he be upset? The last time I saw him, I called him a bully and," she paused, frowning, "I, um, kind of implied that he was a coward for attacking Kikoman-sama. And I was going to kick his head in, if necessary. Or punch him, or throw him across the r-- What?" She looked at Shinichi suspiciously.  
  
He covered his mouth, fighting back a snort. "Seriously? He didn't like the comment-- I was listening, remember?-- but trying to put him through a wall'd make him one happy little kaitou. Remember the last heist, the one where I threw up in Nakamori's squadcar? I got him with a dart." Shinichi grinned, Conan's satisfaction gleaming through for a second. "We really  _did_  fight it out like cats and dogs, and... it was great. About a seven on a scale of one to ten, with 'one' being 'mentally challenged' and 'ten' being 'certifiably ready for a rubber room', that kind of great."  
  
Ran said nothing for a long moment, regarding him over the cooling dregs of her chocolate with a bemused expression. "You really do like him, don't you?" she asked at last.  
  
"......define 'like'....."  
  
Ran blinked at Shinichi, color rising in her cheeks. "You - I didn't mean it like THAT!" Her palm smacked across the top of his head hard, earning a squeak of startled protest from him, and a look from one or two of the patrons. "I  _meant_ ," Ran continued, sotto voce, leaning in so she was nearly whispering in his ear, "You two are really getting along well. As friends."  
  
Shinichi focused on his drink. "Yeah," he agreed, chancing a glance up at Ran - and wilting when he saw the embarrassed sternness still in her face. "I didn't  _mean_  to, though, but when you get past the crazy, he's actually a really good guy." He considered this for a minute, slowly sitting up more straightly, and Ran edged back in tandem, until they had resumed their friendly side-by-side postures. Ran's expression softened, as though she was beginning to regret her sudden outburst; before she got very far with that, Shinichi coughed delicately, with a sheepish smile.  
  
"There's a whole lot of crazy, though."  
  
Ran's mouth quirked up at the corners. "I could sort of tell," she answered under her breath. She shot him a sideways glance, almost as michievous as Kid's, and with a teasing note in her voice went on: "He  _is_  awfully cute." She lowered her voice. "And he's got a lot of fangirls out there, I've seen them in the news and... are you sure you're not turning into a fan yourself?"   
  
Shinichi opened his mouth indignantly, cheeks flaming... and at Ran's giggle collapsed beside her in his best defeated pose. "You've caught me, Ran; you learned my deep, dark secret--"  
  
"--not  _another_  one--"  
  
"--All those times you think Conan's doing his homework? I'm actually writing fanboy mail." As she chortled, he added a little more soberly, still quiet against the coffeeshop's noise, "But actually he's taken a pretty good risk this evening, meeting us like this. I didn't really know if he would... We've had to work through some pretty weird stuff, just to get to this level of--" Shinichi hesitated, looking for the right word. "--trust."  
  
Ran nodded, still amused. "But you  _do_  like him, though; back at the Professor's you called him your friend."  
  
"He is. We're still kind of defining that too, but--" She laughed again, and he gave her a Look. "Fine; what's so funny?"  
  
"Well..." Her eyes twinkled. "If you're still working on it, is that why you're still blushing?" She pointed.  
  
 _Oh, for the love of--_  He was, too; he could feel the heat in his face, and  _What the hell, Kudo?_  he asked himself in chagrin. A possible answer flashed through his mind; it trailed thin traces of memory, something (a dream, a snatch of delerium) from the incoherent hours of his recent change. The memory was too faint and swift catch, but the flavor it left behind made him open his mouth to answer... and then close it again without saying a word.  
  
Ran blinked. "I  _was_  just teasing about your blushing, you know," she murmured, leaning against him. "You DO know that, right?" she asked, eyes questioning.  
  
"I know," Shinichi answered, leaning back, and wondering why he didn't really have an answer to Ran's question.  
  
*  
  
When Kid came back, his approach startled Shinichi and Ran, both of whom had been curled against each other in a very sweet and obvious manner. As they tried to detangle their linked hands, Kid waved one hand gently at them, a benevolent smile working its way easily through his pliable disguise. "No, no, don't move on my account," he murmured, voice lower and smoother than the affected tones of Shigeki-san. Shinichi vaguely recognized it as the Kid's real voice, revealed in the safety of his disguised context, and raised his brows (the prosthetic stretched against his skin, irritating him mildly) in askance. Kid just smiled.  
  
"Sorry about that, I really did just need some fresh air. Sometimes I just have to see the moon."  
  
Ran nodded at that, and Kid settled into his chair across the table from her and Shinichi, drawing one foot up to the seat so he could rest his chin on his knee. On a person in their late teens, as Kid appeared to be, the pose looked natural.  
  
"I do wonder if it wouldn't be better if we retreated to a more amenable setting...especially if you keep nodding off like that, nii-san." Using the clean end of his wooden stirring stick, Kid poked Shinichi's forehead. "Not fooling Geki-kun, buddy."  
  
"Not fooling Mouri-san either," said Ran with a slightly worried look. Shinichi blinked, feeling unaccountably hot; a fine prickle of something, not quite pain but a close cousin, stirred beneath his skin. "Are you alright?"  
  
"I...yyeah. I think so." He glanced around at the coffeeshop's patrons; the place was suddenly altogether too loud and bright. "Maybe you're right. Library?"  
  
Kid stood sharply, his chair squeaking as he pushed it back, then in. Crossing to the other side of the table, he slung one of Shinichi's arms over his shoulders and hoisted the slightly taller man to his feet, despite squawks of protest.  
  
"I can walk on my own," Shinichi snapped crankily, pulling his arm free of Kid's shoulders; the sudden motion turned into a swaying lurch to the right, and Ran slipped his arm over  _her_  shoulders with even less room for protest than Kid had allowed, her grip like steel.  
  
"Hirai-san, let's get you home," she murmured, leading Shinichi from the coffeehouse. At her stature, it was easier and less obstructive to support Shinichi than if Kid had done it; thin and womanishly short, Ran was able to guide and stabilize her friend without looking much more unusual than any other girlfriend plied to her boyfriend's side as they walked home.  
  
 _Girlfriend? Is that what I am...we are, now?_  Ran wondered, wide-eyed. Ahead of them, Kid prowled with just slightly too much purpose and alertness to be casual, and Ran watched the light play over his jacket, curving as it spilled across his rounded shoulders, with absent focus.  _Well, we've kissed...a lot...so does that make us girlfriend and boyfriend?_  
  
"Shinichi?" She murmured his name, so low that nobody but the two of them could have heard it. Resigned to her support now, Shinichi shifted so he could glance down at her, smiling despite the flush of color rising on his face, and the sweat pooling at the corners of his brow.  
  
"What is it, Ran?"  
  
She opened her mouth to speak, reconsidered, and pressed up against his side tightly, bringing them to a halt. "It's starting, isn't it?" she whispered, lifting her face to his. The corners of her eyes reflected the lights, subtly wet. "It's starting."  
  
They stood that way for a moment, long enough for Kid to realize that they'd stopped, and the thief doubled back to their side with a measure of impatience.  
  
"Mouri-san, please. I don't believe my brother is feeling well at all right now--"  
  
Ran released Shinichi's side and pushed her way to stand directly in front of him, grabbing the lapels of his sweatshirt jacket in both fists.  
  
"You listen here, Mister Detective," she hissed, to all intents and purposes ignoring Kid at her elbow. Her tone was no less powerful for its low volume. "You listen here. I am NOT taking the chance that you'll disappear again, or that we'll get half a sentence out and then you'll--" She bit off her words, shook her head once to clear it; tears flew like crystal from her eyes, but when she looked up again, her face was calm and under control, expression warm and loving. She'd locked down the fear.  
  
"I have no idea how long we have. So you - you have to tell me now. You have to tell me now."  
  
Shinichi's eyes were looking directly at Ran's, but it was questionable just how much he saw; there was a glaze over them, and sweat now beaded up visibly before her eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, to answer her-- "R--" He coughed, drew in a gasp of breath. "R--"  
  
"Mouri-san.  _Mouri-san,"_  said Kid insistently. "He has, he will if he can. He  **told**  me. Trust him, please?" She turned towards Kid, anger beginning to flare in her eyes-- which was when Shinichi's knees buckled.  
  
He didn't go down - force of will or sheer luck helping him to stay vertical - but it didn't matter. Suddenly, the need to get him home was paramount, even above Ran's unanswered questions. With one of them under each of his arms, Ran and Kid towed Shinichi out of the plaza. Ran instinctively headed for the train stop, but Kid guided them past it, for the taxi stand. Pushing forward to the front of the group of waiting travelers, Kid left Shinichi to Ran's support and darted in front of a gentleman who was about to escort his companion into an idling taxi.  
  
"Full fare for you and fare and a half for the driver if you let me have this taxi," he snapped, standing between the man and the taxi's door. As the cabbie looked on in confusion, Kid waved to Ran, beckoning her closer, and turned to the driver. "Double fare, then. I need this taxi."  
  
The driver shrugged helplessly at his ex-client. "Sorry, man, I can't argue that logic."  
  
Kid shoved a few thousand yen - a modest cab fee indeed - into the other man's hands. With a short bow to his lady friend, and a murmured apology, Kid took Shinichi from Ran as she reached him. "Go in first, I'll pass him to you."  
  
Ran nodded. "I'm sorry," she said, bowing also to the gentleman and lady. The woman waved, sympathetic, while her date looked pouty.  
  
"Is he sick?"  
  
Ran nodded again, just before she ducked into the cab. "Very."  
  
"I hope he gets better!" The woman raised her voice to make sure Ran, now in the interior of the cab, could hear her, but neither she nor Kid were paying the woman much attention. As Ran got Shinichi buckled in to the middle seat in the back of the cab, Kid slid in beside him, slamming the door shut himself. The cabbie, startled by this breach of etiquette, nevertheless moseyed his way around to the front of the cab and settled into the driver's seat. He was startled by a handful of thousand-yen bills which Kid extended at arm's reach to him.  
  
"As fast as you can," he emphasized, giving the driver the address of the coffee shop near Shinichi's and Ran's houses. Confused but compliant, the driver put the car into gear and laid on the pedal.  
  
*  
  
"He was supposed to be okay until midnight," Ran insisted, frustration bringing tears to her voice and eyes. "Midnight! We were supposed to have three more hours." She bit her lip, hands tightly fisted around Shinichi's clammy right hand. "It's  _always_  like this."  
  
On Shinichi's left, supporting the detective's drooping head against the bumps and shocks of their speedy travel, Kid wisely stayed silent.  
  
*  
  
They got Shinichi into the Kudo library before he started groaning. Near tears - as she had been for the entire cab ride - Ran knelt beside Shinichi's head and stroked sweaty bangs back from his brow. They'd laid him out on the soft library couch, stripping the extra layers of his disguise off, and now one low lamp, the most light that Kid felt it was safe to risk at this hour of night in the heart of a home supposed to be long ago abandoned, lit the features of all three teens with heavy shadow and a low, golden glow. Sweat had beaded up on Shinichi's face like dew, but the patches of latex prosthetic were made all the more artificial-looking as they stayed dry and cold.  
  
Kid seated himself on the arm of the couch above Shinichi's head, uncapping a small plastic bottle. Pressing a cotton handkerchief to its mouth, he upended the assembly, and the harsh scent of rubbing alcohol filled the air around them. Shinichi began to cough.  
  
"What are you--" Ran broke off as Kid bent to his work, working the cloth along the lines where he knew the edges of Shinichi's costume prosthetics were glued. Slowly, they began to peel up from his skin, making the detective's already sickened countenance look even more unnatural and strange. Despite this, Ran watched with intensity as, inch by inch, Shinichi's true face was uncovered. Kid drew the cloth across Shinichi's face in confident, firm strokes, leaving stripes of clean skin in its wake. He soaked it with fresh alcohol when the first dose became too dried out; then again, and again. A second bottle was produced, and the process continued. Ran helped Kid to lift Shinichi's chin, so he could reach the piece glued to the bottom of his jaw and throat, and rubbed her fingers in gentle circles across the sides of Shinichi's tense neck as the latex peeled away.  
  
A sudden spasm hit Shinichi, catching them all off-guard, and Kid's hands jerked up and away from the detective's face as his whole body buckled with the pain. The alcohol in the thief's hands spilled, but he shielded it from falling back down on Shinichi's face, where he might accidentally swallow it. Wiping alcohol out of his own mouth, Kid set aside his handkerchief, pulled out a new one, and continued.  
  
Ran glanced up at the thief as he sat back from his work, scrubbing the back of one hand across his jaw and mouth to clear them of alcohol and sweat. Abruptly, she realized that the spilled alcohol had done its work on Kid, as well. Two latex prosthetics - one across his cheek, and another along his jawline under his lip - hung rather gruesomely like loose skin from his face, where the combination of solvent and friction from his hand had ripped them free. Clean skin and a delicate, peach-fuzzed jawline lay bare in a stripe for her to see, and the shock of seeing it brought a quick flush to her cheeks as she looked away. It was almost like seeing Kid naked, she thought. Maybe it actually was.  
  
"Thank you," Ran murmured, stroking Shinichi's cheek. Eyes closed, brow drawn in concentration or pain, Shinichi was still beautiful to her. Grateful that she would get to see  _his_  face, not the mask of his disguise, in his final moments as his proper age, Ran smiled up at the thief who had made so much possible for them both. "Thank you."  
  
Absently, or at least with as much dispassion as to appear absent, Kid stripped the hanging latex from his face, wincing as the glued ends wrenched free of his skin. "Ow." He shook his head, rubbing his jaw and chin to soothe the skin, and looked down at Shinichi, still dressed in 'Hirai-san's' clothing, still with blacked and mussed hair, but looking entirely like himself in face and features.  
  
Well. For now.  
  
Kid stroked hair back from Shinichi's brow, then paced away from the couch, checking the windows and domed skylight by rote. "Mouri-san, you should go to find --" He was interrupted by Ran's near-growl, a startling contrast to her gratitude of moments before, and the distinct sense that he'd just stepped on a minor landmine.  
  
" _No,_ " she countered from where she knelt beside Shinichi, showing her strong, straight back to Kid, "You can go to Agasa's. I'll stay here."  
  
"Mouri-san." Kid addressed her with a small amount of frustration showing through his patience. "I, if you may remember, am an inter--"  
  
" _I don't care,_ " Ran gritted out, finding and lacing her fingers through one of Shinichi's hands. " _I am not leaving him._  You will go next door and get whatever it is we need. I'm  _staying here._ "  
  
With a sigh, Kid left the room. He startled Ran when he returned a moment later, carrying a kitchen washcloth damp with warm water. "This will get the rest of the makeup and the alcohol off of his skin. I don't know how much he'll be affected by what's on his skin while he changes, but it's best not to take chances. Make sure he's clean."  
  
Kid's light footsteps receded into silence, and Ran shivered; the Kudo house was dark and so very silent, a ghost of the friendly place it'd been while inhabited. Other than the rasping breath of the sufferer on the couch, there was very little to hear.  
  
Shinichi suddenly gasped, a harsh, choking sound; his long body  _arched_  like a bow, free hand gripping and twisting in the fabric of his shirt. His head tossed from side to side, bathed in sweat. "H-hot-- 's so hot," he moaned. "Where-- where--" He blinked, dazed, trying to focus.  
  
"We're in your old house." She wiped at his face, trying not to allow her hand to shake. "You're safe, you're going to be fine, it's going to be okay." Ran attempted a smile; turning his face to press his cheek against the cool cloth, Shinichi shuddered hard, a fine, continual tremor rattling his frame from head to toe.  
  
"I-- r'member now, right," he murmured, eyes closing. Gently wiping at his face and hands, Ran did her best to remove the rest of the alcohol before the next spasm hit. "Wh-- Kid? Where's..." His eyes popped open wide again, but there was very little sense in them; the pupils were narrowed to pinpoints and his usual dark blue seemed faded, grayed. "Kid?"  
  
Folding the cloth in half, the young woman placed it across Shinichi's forehead, swallowing as the heat of his skin radiated against her own. "He went to Agasa's. Just rest, please." She fought back tears as he writhed again, face contorted. "Please--" He was hurting so much; Ran almost wished he'd lose consciousness, as much as she treasured the few minutes that she had left with Shinichi before he...  
  
She couldn't even think of it.  
  
"No, n-no, he shouldn't..." Shinichi's eyes slid closed again; he twisted on the couch. "Shouldn't," he whispered. "D-don't--" There was an odd scent in the air, and Ran's breath caught in her throat; was that  _smoke_  rising from Shinichi's body?  
  
 _Oh God, please..._  It was.  
  
With her free hand, Ran yanked his sweatshirt jacket open, stretched the collar of his tee as wide as it would go. The sluggish white smoke, which carried too sour of an odor to simply be steam, rolled off Shinichi's body in thin sheets, literally rising out of the pores of his skin. Scared, Ran watched as the smoke began to thicken. It didn't seem possible that this was how it was  _supposed_  to happen, but what did she know? She'd never watched a person  _de_ age before. Wishing Kid had brought a bowl of fresh water to refresh her washcloth with, Ran made do with it as it was, one-handedly folding the cloth inside out and dabbing at Shinichi's temples and brow. Smoke and steam rose in the wake of her cloth, and she bit back a sound of fear. In no way, in no sense of  _anything_ , was this right or natural.  
  
She brushed her fingertips against Shinichi's cheek again, and jerked them back as though burned when the skin  _slid_  under her touch, folding over on itself like soft noodles. Her hand entwined with Shinichi's tightened, and it was scant reassurance to her that he squeezed back, ever so faintly.  
  
"Oh, God. Oh God, Shinichi -- Kid!  _Kid!_ " Ran called into the hallway, hoping the thief - or anyone - might hear. "God, please!"  
  
*  
  
The Enka singer on whatever late-night show was playing had reached a part of her song that really should've been taken up by someone with younger vocal chords; Agasa winced, turning the volume down. He sighed, shifting his considerable bulk to settle a little more comfortably on the couch as he stole a look at the clock. And sighed again.  
  
Ai was nearby, curled up into a disturbingly cute huddle of blonde hair and loose, boneless limbs. She barely stirred as the cellphone on the couch arm buzzed, and the professor kept his voice down as he answered. "Moshi moshi...?"  
  
 _"He needs you. It's started. He's next door; come get him."_ There was a pause.  _"Please."_ Click.  
  
Agasa stared at the silent phone in dismay.  _Oh no--_  From the couch there was a sleepy grumble. "...Professor?" Ai blinked sleepy eyes, rubbing at them with the back of her hand as she sat up. "Who was that?"  
  
He took a deep breath, panic rising up from the pit of his stomach. "I... It doesn't matter. Ai-chan, would you prepare Shinichi's room? I'll be back with him in a moment." Worried eyes met startled blue-gray ones, sleep falling away like a shadow.  
  
"Of course."  
  
*  
  
Agasa burst into the front hall of the Kudo mansion to the sound of Ran screaming. Rushing into the library, he held a finger to his lips as he crouched beside her. "Shhh, Ran-chan, shhh, or Shinichi will be in even more danger than he is." Shakily, Ran nodded, murmuring as she sat back - still refusing to let go of Shinichi's rapidly-diminishing hand - to let Agasa see the teen's condition.  
  
"He - his skin, and the heat, and  _smoke,_  and Professor, I --"  
  
"Shhhh. I know. Shin-chan has done this several other times. Usually even more quickly than this." At Ran's horrified look, Agasa nodded grimly. "He loves you very, very much, Ran-chan. Help me lift him."  
  
Shinichi's weight had already halved by that point, and he was now little more than a skin-and-bones shadow of his normal self. Kid's loaned clothing hung off of him like tent fabric, tangling around the hands of the two who tried to aid him. In the end, it was Ran, not Agasa, who carried the bulk of Shinichi's weight. With his body folded into her arms like a child, only his long legs stuck out on one side. Agasa walked beside Ran hesitantly, supporting Shinichi's heels and trying to keep them from banging off of anything, as they made their way out onto the lawn.   
  
The implements and miscellany that Shinichi and Ran had shed were left in the Kudo mansion in the light of the single low lamp, and Ran, without detouring to the front of the house to retrieve her shoes, carried Shinichi out the back door of the Kudo house and along the back path that led to a small neighbors' gate which linked the Kudo and Agasa properties. Barefoot, cheeks wet with tears, hair somewhat a mess, Ran carried the smoking, shriveling body of her best friend in her arms, through Agasa's back yard, and into his house, with a dignity that surpassed some matters of state. Ai met them at the back door, holding it aside as Ran entered. Her burden was growing lighter by the second, but getting increasingly hard to hold.   
  
Only once she had laid him delicately into the hospital bed in Ai's tiny ward did Ran concede to the tremors that were shaking her body and hands, wracking her with a shivering, horrified quaking as strong as the spasms that still moved Shinichi, and collapsed witlessly into a bedside chair. As Agasa and Ai moved quickly to their work, attaching Shinichi to various implements of medical authority, injecting one or another substance into his forearm - and cursing proliferately at his veins, which were literally shifting position as Ai tried to pierce them - Ran clung to Shinichi's thin, fragile hand with both of her own, too afraid to grip tightly, too terrified to let go.  
  
*  
  
Hands clenched on pine-bark, tight enough to crumble bits in a steady shower all the way to the ground below. Hidden in the shadows of greenery just outside the small room's window, a quiet figure watched, expressionless. Only the way his nails bit into the treebranch showed emotion, his thoughts finding their way out through his fingers.  
  
Inside the room, the figure in the bed writhed in agony; the vapors streaming up from the shrinking body pooled like smoke against the ceiling and the windowglass, leaving a thin, oily slick on the pane. No sound made it through the glass; but, shrouded in the fine white mist, the sufferer's mouth could be seen to open, crying out. Beside him, the girl's lips moved as well, frantic endearments and worry spilling in a torrent. The small form bowed and twisted one last time before shuddering back onto the bed, limp and still.  
  
Soft bark crumbled and tore, larger pieces now.  
  
Movement in the room: two others large and small, blocking the view, taking vital signs, conferring together. Large shoulders slumped in relief on the older man; he turned, spoke soundlessly to the other two and patted the young woman's arm, urging her. A hand came forward, stroked a forehead from which the last faint mist had finally dwindled into nothing, stroked sweat-damp hair to one side before trailing off. A sound-monitor was activated, IVs were checked, and the sleeper was at last left alone to rest.  
  
On the branch, the hands stilled.  
  
*  
  
The next morning, during a careful check of Shinichi's.... _Conan's_....vitals, Ai noticed an indistinct lighter spot of color in the center of the window above the exam table. Ran knelt on the table to reach the window and clean it of oil and grime, the source of which made her tremble just to think about. When cleared, the window revealed a narrow rectangle of folded paper, taped to the exterior of the window.  
  
"Whoever left this must have been in the tree to do so!" Agasa remarked, standing at the base of a small ladder to stabilize it while Ran climbed up to reach the note. Simply folded shut, with no seal to ensure privacy, it nevertheless was marked across the front:  _For the detective only._  Ai and Agasa regarded the letter with guarded expressions, but Ran clutched it close to her chest.  
  
"I'm going to give this to him when he wakes up. Because -  _he_  helped us, when Shinichi collapsed." As their expressions didn't change, Ran challenged them further, glaring from one to the other. "He's  _helped_  us! All of us. And I don't care what he's done, but Shinichi thinks he's a good man. So I do too."  
  
"I don't know, Ran-chan," Agasa said, turning away with a troubled look. "You can't deny that he's done wrong things."  
  
"I  _can_  say that he's not murdering or killing or hurting people when he does them," Ran protested. "And if we're going to judge people based on their histories, then _none_  of us can say we're good." Ai's frown sharpened, her eyes narrowing.  
  
"Mouri-san makes a salient point, Professor. At this point, distrusting the Kid is more risky than trusting him...at least if we trust him, or appear to, we'll be close enough to hear his steps when he sneaks up behind us to betray us."  
  
"Kid's not  _like_  that," Ran protested, but Ai had already left.  
  
*  
  
Shinichi woke slowly, aware of loud, irritating sounds-- somebody, several somebodies arguing; there was the Professor's voice, Ai's, Ran's... footsteps, heavy and light, a door sliding shut.  
  
A cool hand, smoothing over his forehead.  
  
 _...Ran?_  
  
He stretched cautiously, feeling the burn of fatigue in every limb, every joint and tendon and nerve. And oh  _God_  he needed a shower; his skin felt crusted, stiff with something thick and chalky. But he was back now, it was over and...  
  
...oh.  _ **Oh.**_  
  
He was back.  
  
 _Sigh._  Shinichi-- Conan-- opened his eyes to sunlight and Ran's face, wan and exhausted. "Morning, Ran-neechan," he managed after a moment, and smiled at her; his face hurt.  
  
Ran bit her lip, shaking her head firmly. "No. Not when it's just us. Not anymore. Just Ran, okay?"  
  
"Just... kidding." He winced, struggling to sit up. "Aaagh... next time I do this, somebody shoot me with--" Shinichi hissed, leaning back against the pillows as Ran carefully helped him up. "--with one of my own darts," he finished, and deflated, staring at his small hands. The digits popped and creaked as he flexed them; Ran reached out, clasping one of hers over the back of his for a second before letting go and settling into her chair again.  
  
She looked so tired; her eyes were shadowed as much by what she'd witnessed as by lack of sleep, and as Shinichi yawned and took stock of his aches and pains, Ran watched him in silence. "Are you really okay?" she asked at last.  
  
"As okay as I'm going to get," he answered wryly. "Right now I feel like I've been on a three-day beer-and-coffee binge with no sleep. You look like you could do with some sleep yourself," Shinichi added; he reached out, just barely able to brush her cheek with his fingertips. "You know, I never asked-- where's your dad think you are right now? I mean, you've been here for a day, pretty much, right?" He hesitated. "It--  _is_  still morning, right?" For a moment he wondered just how long he'd been sleeping.  
  
She gave him back a wan smile. "Still, yes. And you've got mail."  
  
The letter was terse, written in a considerably more shaky version of Kid's standard hand.

> _Chibitantei_
> 
> _As always, Haibara's solvency is at risk if she has killed you._
> 
> _...This time I really was afraid she had._
> 
> _Please let me know when you feel ~~yourself~~  healthy again._

  
  
As usual, there was no signature. The only identifying mark, where the signature should have been, was a tiny sticker depicting a white meatbun with ears and a smiling face.  
  
A little shaky himself, Shinichi wondered what Haibara's reaction would be if he told her that a crazy person had her imminent demise in mind if her experimentation happened to cause his.  _She'd probably just raise her eyebrows and say 'He'll have to take a number' and then she'd bug my phone._  He folded the note, glancing up and smiling at Ran reassurringly. "It's okay; he was just checking up on me-- wanted to make sure all my parts were in working order, that sort of thing. Probably wants to make sure I didn't end up with two heads or an extra leg or... whatever."  
  
She rubbed at her eyes, returning the smile to a small degree at least. "I didn't read it," Ran said simply. "Oh-- and Tousan thinks I'm at home; he's in Okinawa on a missing-persons case, he won't be back 'til this evening." She sighed, slumping in her chair and leaning her forward onto the edge of the bed. "God, I'm tired. I could sleep just like this."  
  
"Yeah, and get a crick in your neck." Shinichi stretched again, groaning as various things creaked; he felt loose and unsettled, and his skin positively  _crawled_  with the need for a shower. "Look, I need to clean up; why don't you lay down here for a bit?" At her startled blink, Shinichi shook his head. "It's fine, Ran; you're not going to do anybody any favors if you fall over, and I'm okay... no, really. No,  _really,_  Ran. See? It's not so bad this time; maybe all those nutrients and stuff Haibara shoved into me really did help." Moving cautiously, he slid one leg out of bed and then the other, locking his knees to keep them solid enough to stand. Thankfully someone (and he devoutly hoped it'd been the Professor) had not only removed whatever IVs had been hooked up to him during his change back, they'd also dressed him in a clean-if-oversized yukata again, just like before. The room spun a little, but other than a certain dizziness and the lingering collection of aches, Shinichi really didn't feel all that horrible.  
  
It took a little persuasion, but a few minutes later the hiss of the shower came from the tiny bathroom across the hall; and when Shinichi shuffled back in, overlong yukata dragging around his ankles, it was to find Ran curled up where he had so recently slept. Her hair was a drift of chestnut across his pillow; Shinichi smoothed it back, watching her peaceful face smile ever so faintly in sleep, and left the room as quietly as possible.  
  
* * *  
  
Kid wasn't online, and Shinichi wasn't feeling particularly patient. Ensconced in blankets and pillows, thoroughly dosed with painkillers and vitamins, well-fed and (in his opinion) quite sufficiently worried-over, thanks very much, he had about as much privacy as he was going to be able to find while still cooped up in Agasa's house. Granted, with Ran around, it wasn't like Shinichi was aching for solitude. Even having returned to Conan, Shinichi still felt that being around Ran was somehow easier, more satisfying.  _Honesty often is._  The thought made him smile as Ran glanced up from her novel to meet his eyes, then back to her page. They were on the couch again, but now that Shinichi was so much smaller, the open spot at the center of the couch - between Ran's tucked-up feet and Shinichi's blanket-bundled legs - was big enough for a whole adult to sit down with room to spare.  
  
Unbidden, Shinichi's mind filled in that missing person, the unruly hair and sparking indigo eyes.  
  
 _God, I hope he's okay._  But why wouldn't he be? Shinichi, not Kid, had been the one to undergo the dangerous transformation during the previous night. Kid had been smart enough to  _leave_  before Agasa and Ai got involved - or at least, that was the best guess that Ran had been able to offer Shinichi as she explained the night's events. "His mask, it'd...it was starting to come off," she'd said, and that much worried him. Kid surely wasn't one to run around without proper precautions - including disguise repair. Shinichi was sure of that much. But then why...  
  
He shook his head, trying to dismiss the tenacious thoughts. Another glance over the edge of his manuscript (the unpublished Lupin volume, which Kid had finished with and returned to the library sometime in the past week) showed no change in Kid's online profile, where the little bubble-shaped icon was still grey, meaning "offline." Shinichi sighed, closing his eyes for a long moment, and opened them again.  
  
Green.  
  
The bubble was green. Shinichi had dropped the manuscript, pulling his laptop from where it rested on his shins up to his lap, close enough to type, before he'd even thought. The keys rattled as he typed a greeting and sent it. On the other end of the couch, Ran looked up first with curiosity, then understanding, as she observed Shinichi's attention narrowing in to include the screen and little else.  
  
"Tell him thank you from me," she murmured, low enough that Ai, on the other side of the room in her armchair, would have had to make a rude point of eavesdropping before she could comment on the request. Shinichi looked up from his screen, fierce eyes showing soft gratitude for Ran through the wash of competitive focus that was directed Kid-ward, and had opened his mouth to reply when a little electronic ding enraptured his attention.  
  
 _sombody was camping my profile, i see,_  1nb!u sent. Shinichi could all but hear the wry amusement in the thief's voice.  
  
 _Timing is everything,_  answered Dductshn cheerfully.  _I was worried, actually; wanted to make sure you'd made it home okay. I wasn't really aware of a lot after a certain point, just-- well. I was pretty out of it. Wanted to thank you, too, and so does Ran._  He considered for a second before crossing his blanket-covered ankles and adding whimsically:  _Think you've got another fan there. You made quite an impression._  
  
He hit the enter key and watched the message blink from his past to the thief's present; 'wanted to thank you' was... pathetically small for what he wanted to say, but burbling on about  _you gave us a fantastic gift_  and  _I think if I'd collapsed before you got Agasa and Ai to help I might've died_... he couldn't do that. Wanted to, but couldn't.  
  
So all Shinichi did was add one more line:  _Glad you were there too._  And hit enter before he could change his mind. He didn't have long to wait until the little graphic popped up to indicate that Kid was typing; then, shortly afterward, the message came through:  
  
 _wouldntve missed it 4 th world_  
  
The detective bit his lip to keep from grinning too much; Ai'd start looking at him with that 'You Need Medication' stare of hers if he wasn't careful.  _Yeah, well, think it'll be a while before I try that one again. The other times were a lot faster. Kind of glad I don't remember a lot, really. So- now I've got 4 more days before I'm officially 'back'. Poking, prodding, blood samples, no joy there. Boring as hell--_  Shinichi thought a bit, snickered beneath his breath and once more added an end-tag:  _\--and I have to spend it feeling like a weekend._  
  
 _...must b sleepy, but im not w u on that 1. is the pun english or jpn?_  
  
The snicker made its way out, causing Ran to blink at him with a little smile of her own.  _Either. Not a pun. Weekends and me, we're both just too damn short._  
  
The grin that split Kid's face at that - startling himself - was a toothy, gleeful one. With a sense of ease he hadn't had in the last twelve hours, he settled back against his pillow and tapped out a response.  
  
 _glad 2 see u can laugh @ urself, chibitantei._  The warmth that suffused him at that thought, picturing Shinichi's cocky grin - in whichever size - helped to further release the knot of tension that had its hands around his heart.  _you're really alright, then? i will lower my guard for just long enough to impress my sincerity on you._    
  
A familiar cooing interrupted Kid, and he lifted his fingers from the keys to dig them gently into the shoulder muscles of the dove perched on the edge of his laptop. Around him, the Kuroba conservatory was in the process of becoming gilded with sunset light, and his doves were beginning to congregate around him, the most ambitious of them perching on his arms, toes, and laptop. "Ladies, I'll be with you in a moment," Kid assured them, turning back to his laptop to finish his comments and send them.  
  
 _I don't often see someone in as much pain as you seemed, tantei. That's why I need to be certain._  
  
On his end of things, Shinichi sighed. His body remembered the agony better than his mind did-- brains were resilient, they shoved away the things that harmed them so often. But when he remembered the beginnings of it with his mind, his body recalled the endings; it was a little like the phantom pain that an amputee supposedly experienced, only--  
  
 _\--only mine's_ _everywhere_ _. I don't want to remember._  
  
His grin had faded; Shinichi nodded to himself (or perhaps to Kid) and typed:  _I'm as well as I can get. It's why I was told a week, because we didn't -know- how I'd be when I came back. The nutrients helped, the preparations helped, even those goddamn protein drinks that keep getting shoved on me are helping. I wobble when I walk, but I -can- walk and my two Mad Scientists have been checking and measuring everything they can think of._  
  
Shinichi was silent for a moment; his fingers were slow on the keys when he began again.  _First time I changed, I thought I'd died- that was the first thing I thought of when I woke, that I'd been killed. Every time I go through this and make it back, it's one more victory over death, one less murder. And - I'm sorry you had to see that. Not easy to watch, I imagine._  He remembered the note on the window; so Kid had been there for the end. Somehow, Shinichi wasn't surprised.  
  
In the conservatory, Kid frowned, tapping his fingernail against the body of his computer, fighting back half a dozen impulses to say a dozen different things. None of them were particularly appropriate. Frustrated, he settled for an exit:  
  
 _i had the easier job.  
  
i'll be in touch..._  
  
He clicked his status over to 'idle/absent,' a yellow bubble replacing his green one, and gently set the computer down on the flagstones beneath his bench. Shifting position, accompanied by the sussurant rustle of feathers from the many doves perched on and around him, Kid pillowed his head against the rail of the bench, leaving the cushion he'd brought down from the bedroom to support his neck and back as he reclined.  
  
 _"Cat got your tongue, Kaitou?"_  The mental image of Kuroba Kaito settled into a seated position "on" the flagstones beside Kid, hands gathered with a deck of cards in his lap, and as long as Kid kept his eyes closed, the illusion was convincing enough to count as reality. The magician was dressed, as usual when it was just the two of them and both were turned inward toward the space and wealth of imagination they shared, in a black outfit of turtleneck and slacks, similar to Kid's civilian choice of thicker black turtleneck and rugged navy jeans. Mirror images of each other, except that one was a little rougher, one a little cooler, one a bit more fey, one a little harder.  
  
"Mmmn?" Kid glanced over at Kaito, opening his mind's eye but not his real ones. Absently he stroked the dove sleeping on his stomach, rubbing at his hair with his free hand. "No, not at all...too much I want to say to him. Not a useful thing out of the bunch."  
  
Kaito bent the deck, then let the cards feather out of his fingers, rising in a careful, steady arc from one hand to another.  _"Well, try some of them on me."_  
  
Kid considered this, his bearing casual but his expression concerned. "I really was afraid I'd lost him." He frowned, hands now working in tandem over the dove's back and wings. "Which implies he's mine to lose. Which opens a whole new puzzlebox."  
  
 _"Well, you_ _have_ _solved the Edogawa puzzlebox now. It was about time for you to find another Gordian knot to toy with."_  
  
Kid snickered mirthlessly. "But I only found the Shinichi puzzlebox again when I solved it. And now there's Mouri-san to consider." Kaito's face shuttered closed at that, and Kid nodded knowingly, holding one hand out to the magician. Kuroba riffled half the deck into Kid's palm, and, nodding thanks, Kid began an arc-shuffle of his own.  
  
 _"You know how I feel about that sort of problem,"_  Kaito murmured, and Kid countered him quickly.  
  
"No, that's the very funny thing, Magician. 'That sort of problem' is different than the problem of Mouri-san."  
  
Kaito let the cards fall still for a moment, then after a moment more, looked up to meet Kid's sadly smiling eyes.  _"You know, I was not serious, back when I told you to kiss him. And if you were planning to anyway, I believe you've just missed_ _exactly_ _the sort of window that you were looking for."_  
  
Kid shook his head a little, handing his half of the deck back to Kuroba and laying his head back on the rail of the bench. "I'm not sure that's the most important thing, though. I nearly lost him, Magician, after only just getting him back."  
  
 _"Back?"_  A pause.  _"Oh, well. That's not a very healthy way to look at it."_  
  
Kid shrugged eloquently, calling a black messenger cap out of the air to shield his eyes as he settled in for a true nap. "Nothing about our psyche is healthy, you know. Viewing the fondness of my illicit friend as a replacement for the affection of my murdered father...at the same time as admitting to a rising affection for said friend that, aside from crossing all boundaries of legality on both sides of the law, has nothing at all to do with paternal liaisons...while juggling the commitment I feel to ensure that the relationship between he and Mouri-san is insulated from whatever damages I can manage... all the while knowing that my care for her, while legitimate now that I am acquainted with her, was originally seeded and nourished out of a misplaced source of guilt from the knowledge that I am by the very fact of my identity unable to halt the endangerment of your hopes for Nakamori-san and yourself..." A grin, shaded only a few degrees off of Kid's standard mania. "Well, I don't feel any of that is more unhealthy than any other pastime I've indulged in over the last year."  
  
Kuroba chuckled, reassured.  _"So long as we're clear."_  
  
  
*


	14. "Identity, cows, assistance"

  
_Theme music:_   _Falling Down, by Oasis_  
  
*  
  
On the sidewalk in front of the Mouri Detective Agency, a man dressed casually in denim and a baseball cap came to a halt, craning his neck back to grin up at the second-story windows, and pulled out his cell phone. Inside, the phone that rang was not the imposing black affair on Mouri Kogoro's desk -- a good thing, as the man was tipped forward onto his desk, asleep between beer cans and shrimp chip bags -- but instead the small cell phone of the smallest resident of the agency.  
  
 _Beedeepbeedeep-- click._  "Moshi moshi?"  
  
The agency was, aside from the TV, rather quiet; Ran had been picked up by her mother and dragged off protestingly to a college open-house to look at paralegal programs and their requirements. She'd been intrigued but a little doleful-- Shinichi (or rather, Conan) had only 'returned' the previous evening. These things needed to be looked into, though, and so the only other sound to hear was Mouri's saw-edged snoring, which blended into the television's banal white-noise rather well.  
  
On the sidewalk, the caller smiled. "Yo, chibi."  
  
Shinichi laughed, leaning back in his chair. His legs were far too short to reach the table in front of him, so he kicked them up onto the cushions instead. "Took you long enough to figure out my phone number," he snarked, recognizing the caller.  
  
"Figure out? Whaddaya mean, I've had it this whole time!"  
  
Shinichi snickered. "Suuuure you have. That's why you've called so frequently."  
  
"Anyway," the caller said, shrugging that one off without argument, "Ya gonna let me in 'r not?"  
  
"You never seem to have problems just wandering into places at other times. What makes today different? Just wander on up, then you can call it breaking and entering."  
  
"Why would I wanna do that, Kudo? First, with an invitation, it can't be considered trespassin'. Second, since you just explicitly mentioned breaking and entering t'me, what would make me wanna come in anyway? The old man busy? You oughta just come down an' meet me."  
  
"You  _like_  being contrary, Kid. I thought letting you pretend to be entering without an invitation might make you happy."  
  
" _Kid?_  Now waitasecond, Kudo, who's the kid around here? Last I checked  _you're_  the shortie."  
  
"That reminds me. When was the last time you saw Hattori, anyway? You do a damn good impersonation of him, for only having run into him a couple times." Shinichi pushed himself up from the couch, padding to the window, and peered down to the sidewalk. There, glaring up at the Mouri Detective Agency's big windows, one hand shading his eyes against the afternoon sun with the help of his beat-up, worn-in, signature baseball cap, was Hattori Heiji. Shinichi grinned, impressed. "You did a damn good job on the disguise, though, skin tone and everything. Looks really good. Give me a minute to get a note written to tell Mouri where I'm going, and I'll head out with you. Ran's not here, so she can't come along, though she says hi. But come on up in the meantime, yeah? Standing around on the sidewalk like that makes you look lost."  
  
There was silence on the line. Then it went dead, and a thunderous rattle could be heard, charging up the stairs. And in another moment, Hattori was framed in the open doorway of the detective agency, hands on his hips, glare firmly fixed on his features, and his hat was turned around backwards.  
  
" _Who'd you say I was?_ " he challenged the shorter detective, eyes narrowed.  
  
There are moments of dread, and then there are  _Moments Of Dread._  Kudo Shinichi experienced one of the latter, staring up at the Osakajin who, for once, was doing his best to loom (which he managed quite well.) "Uh. Hattori?" Granted, the idiom about what makes a duck a duck ("If it looks like a tantei and quacks like a tantei--") didn't properly apply in any situation where Kid might have the faintest chance of being involved, but--  
  
 _Shit. It really IS Hattori._  "Just... kidding?" Shinichi hazarded, hoping for the best.  
  
Hattori grabbed Shinichi by the back of his collar, using every advantage that his height, strength, and size afforded him to lift the pint-sized detective up to eye level. And then asked him again, with more of a growl in his voice,  
  
" _WHO_  did you think I was?" He even added a little shake, for good measure.  
  
"Awp! Dammit, Hattori, put me down!" Shinichi hung there, half-strangled by his own collar, feet kicking. "Goddammit, DOWN!"  
  
Hattori merely transferred his hold from Shinichi's collar to his armpits, using both hands to hold him up: all the elevation without the strangulation. "Nope."  
  
Behind them, Mouri snorted and muzzily raised his head. "Mnzz...'zwhere's Ran? Whassa happenin?"  
  
 _"...nothing,"_  said Shinichi, staring Hattori muleishly in the eye. "We're just going out, Ojisan. We'll be back later! Not. Here. Put me down and let's GO, Hattori."  
  
Mouri blinked, flopped back onto his desk, and drifted back to sleep, babbling all the while. "Whussa...CHIPS! I need m're chips....mmmweeeeee, chips for Yoko-chaaaaan~"  
  
"Sleep tight, occhan," Hattori said cheerily, rotating Shinichi in his hands so he could pack the ersatz child under one arm, like a sack of potatoes. "Whatcha need, chibi? Got your wallet an' everything? House keys? Okay, let's go."   
  
Ignoring Shinichi's squirming, Hattori kicked the kid's shoes out the door of the agency, following them out and hanging the "closed" sign, as well as locking the agency door, as he went. From there he headed down the stairs to the street, booting Shinichi's shoes down ahead of him, and ignoring for the most part Shinichi's struggles, which had elevated to kidney kicks. By the time they got to the bottom of the stairs, one of the shoes' generators had gotten turned on by a random bounce, and when it hit the stoop just outside the agency, the kinetic force ricocheted it back and up, narrowly missing Heiji's head. It clanged against the overhead light in the lobby, and the high  _tisshhhh_  of breaking glass was audible even above the sounds of the street outside. The shoe thumped to the floor at the bottom of the stairs, still humming, and Heiji plopped Shinichi down with a frustrated growl, heading back into the lobby to retrieve the shoe.  
  
"Gawdammit, that nearly took my head off."  
  
Nursing a serious case of injured dignity (and extreme Logic Fail), Shinichi sulked as he received the shoe back and jammed both onto their respective feet. "Not like you were using it for anything useful," he muttered, yanking his sweatshirt back into place. "And like I said,  _not here._  Come on." Breath fogging in the cold midafternoon air, he led the other detective down the sidewalk, stomping in what he was entirely aware was a fairly ridiculous manner... exactly like a sulky child.  
  
But  _not here_  was correct; the stairwell wasn't the place for daytime explanations...  
  
There was a playground not too far away, edging a certain park that had several months back hosted a Kid heist of sorts. The swingset was empty for once; too cold and damp to encourage much of a crowd, the entire park was mostly empty that day.  _Good._  Shinichi made his way across the brown autumn grass and took his favorite spot, the swing seat on the end towards the trees; and he waved irritably at the tall figure who'd followed him. "Sit DOWN, Hattori. You're giving me a pain in the neck."  
  
" _Look who's talking,_  Kudo!" Hattori snapped back. "You actually thought I was the Kid, and you were going to  _go hang out with him!_ "  
  
Shinichi sighed, slumping in his seat and deflating a little-- but not all the way. "Yeah, I did," he said flatly. "Things've... gotten complicated lately." He kicked at the ground, pushing off just enough to move the swing but not to do something as childlike to actually  _swing,_  though his legs wanted the movement. Guilt suffused him: he hadn't called or emailed Heiji in too long. But--  
  
 _Complicated._  The boy raised his head to glance back at Hattori, bad temper draining away a bit. "--in lots of ways," he amended. "For instance? Ran knows about me now."  
  
Heiji opened his mouth to yell-- then froze, snapped it shut again, and started pacing. His frown deepened. "And  _when_  were ya gonna tell me alla this? Shit, d'I gotta move down here to keep a freakin' leash on ya, Kudo? You're off the deep end! Tellin' Ran means you're puttin' her in danger. And hanging out with  _the Kid?_ " He pulled off his cap, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration. "Seriously, please, tell me this's all some big joke. Haibara's got a camera on me, right?"  
  
"God, I hope not." The smaller detective shuddered. "And it happened, well-- some of it happened all at once, some of it happened after that heist with all the explosions, and some of it happened last weekend. Stop yelling, would you? Please." Glasses in hand, he rubbed at his eyes. The days following Shinichi's return to his diminished state had, for the most part, settled his aches down to almost nothing-- except for a lingering headache, occasionally severe. Ai had theorized that it had to do with somatotrophine levels that still fluctuated almost constantly and probably would continue to do so for a few more days; what it felt like was a low-level hangover. "Still getting used to the idea; it wasn't easy, but I had good reason to do it. And-- did you  _ **really**_  want to be around to watch her blow up?" The boy tipped his head back, eyes still closed and hands clasped loosely around the chains of the swings, glasses dangling. "She took it better than I expected, but it wasn't easy... I honestly thought she was going to kill me at one point. And Hattori? If she'd heard that you'd known all along..."  
  
In the pause that followed as Hattori absorbed this, Shinichi thought hard and fast. Just what could he tell that wouldn't be a betrayal? What could he hold back that wouldn't be an  _equal_  betrayal, only this time of Heiji?  
  
 _This sucks. Totally sucks. Okay, stick with the basic beginnings; you don't have the right to say anything else, not really._  
  
".....and as for Kid-- you heard about some of Nakamori's squad almost dying in that mess a few months back? Rescued by an anonymous good samaritan who ended up damaged and hospitalized? Saved four men from being roasted alive?" Hattori raised an eyebrow beneath the edges of his hat, acknowledging this, and Shinichi hiked one small shoulder in a matching shrug. "He was wearing white." Hooking his elbows around the swing-chains, the detective crossed his arms defiantly and rested his chin on his wrists. "And... that's all I can say. At least right now. I  _won't_  lie to you, and I  _can't_  break my word. So I guess I'm screwed." Hattori could've figured out the rescuer's identity with a little investigation of his own, considering his father's connections; so this very limited amount of information was, just barely, permissible within Shinichi's narrow avenue of just what he would allow himself to say.  
  
But it still felt wrong, both to start telling... and to stop. The boy blew out his breath in one unhappy sigh, frosting the air; totally apart from the throb in each temple, he felt like utter crap. Couldn't he just once, once have some sort of relationship that didn't involve a heavy helping of guilt?  
  
After a long moment, Hattori flopped into the next swing over, and with a long-legged kick off the ground, set himself swinging. When Shinichi looked over, startled, Hattori shrugged without looking at him and focused his gaze on the sky.  
  
"No point stayin' mad at you. Done's done, so I might's well chill an' get the whole story from ya, so I know what not t'say to who." His mouth popped open in a big white grin, and the over-the-shoulder look he gave Shinichi was enough to assure the boy that all was forgiven. "Even tho I still say you're off your freaking rocker."  
  
He pushed off the ground again, pointing his toes and leaning back to gain speed. "So what now? I jus' came inta town cause I had a free weekend and I hadn't seen ya in a while, and Kazuha was gettin' on my nerves anyway, so here I am. But now I don' know what I can do t'help you cause all the rules changed, so you're gonna hafta gimme a chance t'catch up."  
  
Now it was Shinichi's time to sit and absorb his friend's response; it was-- entirely a Hattori Heiji thing, hot-tempered and doggedly logical in turns, perfectly capable of smacking you in the head for being an idiot and then savaging anybody else who dared to attack you. Tilting his head so that the cold swing-chain rested cold and solid against one temple, Shinichi eyed the Osakajin as he swung, relief pushing out into the crook of a one-cornered grin.  
  
"...we'll figure it out. And-- thanks, Hattori."  
  
Straightening, he pushed off with his feet; Shinichi didn't have the weight or the long legs to gain momentum like the other, much heavier swinger did; the thick metal frame made ominous creaking noises as the two gained speed. Pushing himself, feeling the exertion in limbs that still twinged with the chimerical aftereffects of his change, Shinichi found himself giving into the elation of movement and leaving gravity to take care of worry for the time being.   
  
Forward and back--  
  
Higher and faster, chains taut and no longer jingling; the rush of the climb backwards, legs straight and pushing on momentum as if it had mass and a place for your feet. Then the fall and the upwards arc, so hard and swift that there was a moment of weightlessness at the top when your seat bucked and you (almost) soared free.  
  
Forward and back--  
  
Flash of Heiji's face, grinning like a kid as his hat went airborne.  
  
Forward and back--  
  
Level and even and  _backwards_  and then  _forwards_  and then climb! and push! and  _let go--_  
  
Heiji, heavier and with a kendo competitor's sense of balance, landed on both feet with a tremendous double thud and posed there like an athlete,  _TING!_ , until he allowed his knees to go and he fell over flat on his back, huge grin on his dark face. Shinichi, on the other hand, did a fairly decent imitation of one of his own soccer balls and landed in a rolling tumble on the cold grass nearly two meters beyond. Spitting out grass, he propped himself up on his elbows and grinned back. Both grins broke up, and the two laughed at each other like lunatics in training until they were weak.  
  
The sun had tucked behind the buildings by this point, and the shadows already pooled across the playground and lawn grew darker as the pair laid in the grass and watched the clouds scud across the purple-blue sky. The colors peculiar to urban sunset washed the buildings and sky alike, turning them colors before the deep blue of true dark began to leach that color away. As the deeper chill of evening settled in, Heiji and Shinichi headed back for the Mouri agency, expecting Ran and warm food.  
  
"You think she'll be upset I didn' warn her that there's an extra for dinner?" Heiji was asking, as they waited for traffic to clear so they could cross the street.   
  
  
"If she's back yet," said his companion, distracted by a squadcar that passed, lights and sirens going full blast. Shinichi did a mental check on the car's number; nobody he knew. "Her mom dragged her off to some sort of college thing." He shrugged, watching the lights doppler out of view. "We can always order takeout." He gave the Detective of the West a sideways, upwards look, grinning just a little. "You nervous about her? She did figure that you covered for me, you know, I wasn't kidding about that."  
  
Heiji mulled this over. "I dunno, she didn't kill  _you_  yet. But then 'gain I'm not her boyfriend, so she's maybe got less reason not t'kill me than you. But I've done less to get killed over, too?" Heiji shrugged as they trotted their way across the street, coming up on the sidewalk directly in front of the agency. "Eh, I'm not worried."  
  
"Yeah?" The word  _boyfriend_  didn't make him flush like it might have a week earlier; Shinichi'd had a little time to get used to the concept (the movie had definitely helped) and as they gained the sidewalk, he raised an eyebrow. "I'm not so sure about that 'done less' part. Somewhere," Shinichi added darkly, "I think she's been making a list of how many times we've messed with her, and what we owe in payback. And now that Ran knows, she's going to collect."  
  
 _BOOM._  
  
It was not so much a sound as a tangible percussive blow, the sort of bass sound that pushed at your ribcage and sternum. In this case, though, it had more clearly tangible aspects as well, including flying shards of concrete and ice. Shinichi and Heiji, both accustomed for different reasons to the necessity of quick reflexes, were able to shield their faces and necks from injury, as the percussive  _slam_  that landed not one foot in front of their faces sent dust, concrete, and shards of razorlike ice flying at them in a blast radius. Heiji gritted his teeth, some sound escaping, as one of the larger chunks of debris ripped a gash in the back of his shirt, drawing blood in a line from his kidney to his shoulderblade. Shinichi, a much smaller target, felt chunks of ice beginning to melt in his scalp, mixed with the blood they had drawn, as everything came to a standstill.  
  
All the debris was on the ground, now that the single moment of impact had passed. Car sirens  _whoop-whoop-whooped_  their complaints to an uninterested handful of pedestrians, two of whom had rushed over to help Shinichi and Heiji to stand. Heiji, despite his injury, held the well-meaning pair back at arm's length, turning slowly to look at what had caused the veritable explosion.  
  
"Ku--Conan," Heiji said slowly, studying the fallen object that had landed - hard enough to create a ten-foot-wide crater of cracked and broken concrete, and deep enough to reveal the dirt and municipal structures below that - on the sidewalk between the two detectives and the Mouri agency. Ran and Mouri appeared, one on top of the other, in the street level doorway of the agency, and both pulled up short to boggle at the same thing Heiji, Shinichi, and all the onlookers were staring at as well. Ran had clearly come from cooking, as her chopsticks were still in hand, apron wrapped around her waist, and Mouri looked fresh from a nap. Shinichi gathered all this information with a perfunctory glance, then turned his attention back to the incident of the moment, stepping to the side to get a different angle on it.  
  
"Yes, Heiji-niichan?" he asked, phoning in his mannerisms as Conan, the elementary detective with a magnetism for trouble.  
  
"When I said I was worried about Ran-neechan having enough food for all of us...haha, wow." Heiji boggled and Shinichi stepped in.  
  
"Well it's lucky, right? For a whole frozen cow to come to our doorstep like this?"  
  
Ran looked to the meat - which was, in fact, the entirety of a dressed, flash-frozen cow, pinky red and vaguely rectangular, ready to be parceled out into individual cuts, and twice as long as Conan was tall - and then glanced at the pair of detectives in turn.  
  
"Well," she said, visibly marshaling herself, "Don't just stand there. Come on in and wash your hands, dinner's almost ready."  
  
Heiji stared blankly at her, then at the beef. "...The cow?"  
  
Ran tsked at him and - admirably - held a straight face. "I can't use  _that_  for sukiyaki, it's not thawed."  
  
A little dazedly, Conan knelt beside the smoking crater. 'Smoking', because the frozen carcass was much cooler than even the chilly autumn air; 'crater', because it had quite thoroughly demolished the sidewalk below, and water from at least one busted pipe was beginning to pool around the glossy meat, adding to the thaw. "Airplane," he murmured; beside him Heiji squatted as well, supporting himself with one outstretched arm.  
  
"Had t'be. Not like cows go skydiving every day, especially dead ones." He absentmindedly wiped away a trickle of blood that had been trailing down his arm.  
  
"Mmhmm... two thousand feet, maybe? The airport's pretty far away. And-- what, three-hundred-fifty kilos, you think?" Conan scowled at the crater, blinking irritably at whatever was fogging his eyes. "So, the hole's about a meter deep; that sets velocity of impact at, um..." He calculated. "...just short of one-hundred-ten meters per second and-- uh, Heiji? You're dripping."  
  
"So're you. You got cow in your hair, Kudo."  
  
A hand fell on each shoulder. "Would you two heros  _please_  come inside and let me bandage you up?" Ran was standing behind them, gritting her teeth. "Tousan called the police; they should be here any minute and I wasn't kiii _iiIIIEEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!!!"_  The young woman literally leaped backwards, jaw dropping in horror as she pointed into the pit. All around, the crowd of bystanders jerked in response.  
  
"What? Dead cow, we know! What?"  
  
"Th-th-th-- _Dead! Hand!_ " Eyes bugging out, Ran continued to point...  
  
...at the frozen, grayish and unmistakably non-bovine hand and forearm protruding from the carcass's broken ribcage, fingers loosely curled.  
  
Shinichi stared at the hand for a long moment, sighed tightly, and pulled out his cellphone. "Megure-keibu? Yes? Yes, this is about the cow that ojii-san just called about. Yes, there's something else about it..."  
  
As the boy headed inside for privacy, scooting to the side to let Mouri pass on his way back outside, Ran had started to try to care for Heiji while the Osakajin detective flatly refused to leave the body.  
  
"I gotta take pictures, Neechan," he protested, as she tried to hold him still so she could get a bit of gravel out of his back. Ran hit him hard enough to make him wince for that one.  
  
"You're bleeding all over the crime scene,  _Hattori-kun,_  so just. Hold! Still!"  
  
Mouri passed them, unrolling a roll of yellow police tape as he went. "Back up, please, back up! This is a crime scene now, back up! Back  _up!_ " The crowd sluggishly obeyed his demands, inching off of the broken concrete at the crater's edge.  
  
By this point, Conan was back on the street, putting his cell phone away even as he tugged on Mouri's pant leg for attention. "Ne, ne, Ojii-san, I talked to Megure-keibu, because Heiji-niichan and I thought that the cow came from an airplane. So Megure-keibu's gonna send us a list of all the planes that were gonna fly over us this evening. I told him to fax it to us."  
  
"Ahhh, that's good, good job, bozu. Now get out of the way, you're stepping on police territory."  
  
"But Ojii-san, there's no police here to make--" 'Conan' was cut off as a strong hand gripped the back of his shirt collar.  
  
"Either you tow Hattori-kun inside and let me clean the both of you up, or I  _pick you up_. Am I making myself clear?"  
  
Shinichi turned his head by careful degrees to look over his shoulder at Ran. She was a powerful convincing actor, Shinichi decided; of everyone watching, he would lay money that only he or Heiji would have been able to identify the warning glint in her eye, meant for him as an equal, rather than a child. The rest of her behavior was not a notch changed from before the past week; Shinichi had to give her credit. Ran could maintain confidentiality as well as any detective.  
  
Displeased with his hesitation, Ran tugged meaningfully on his collar.  _She would do it, too._  Shinichi wasn't sure whether the thought amused or dismayed him.  
  
"H-hai, Ran-neechan," he answered, trooping up the stairs into the agency, and leaving Mouri on the sidewalk to control the crowd. The wail of sirens, faint but growing louder, assured the trio that Mouri wouldn't be alone for long.  
  
*  
  
"Itai! Ow! Leave me a little skin, okay?" Hattori would've shrugged himself out of Ran's hands if he could; however, the hand that was gripping his head like a five-fingered vice had a lot to do with his reluctant choice to remain in place-- well, that and the threats. Shirt off, the Osakajin sat bare-torsoed in the agency's office, having the last of the dirt, blood and thawing cow scrubbed from his back. Shinichi had already received cleanup and care for his own, more minor wounds (scalp-cuts and one slightly jagged gash square above his nose at the hairline; Heiji'd remarked that if it'd been just a little lower he could've done a decent Harry Potter impression.)  
  
"Just a--" Ran took a good swipe with her antiseptic-soaked wad of gauze. "--second-- There, done. Let it clot for a minute and I'll tape you up." She sat back, wiping her hands on a cloth nearby before her gaze strayed back to Shinichi. "How's it feeling?" she asked a little worriedly. From outside the static of a squadcar radio mixed with Mouri's brusque tones and the gabble of the crowd. A newscrew had already shown up to film the thawing mass, which some wit had already judged in Television English to be a 'U.F.O.'-- an Unidentified Falling Object.  
  
"Where's the rest of it?"  
  
"What?" Ran blinked. "Rest of what?"  
  
Heiji snorted, picking up the spattered mess of his shirt and jacket, poking one finger through the rips and then allowing them to drop. "Rest've the corpse. There wasn't room in that one cow for th'whole thing." He glanced at the ceiling ominously; the other two followed his gaze, and the room held a pregnant silence for a few seconds.  
  
"That's... eeeew." Ran grimaced. "One's enough." She picked up Conan's glasses from where they'd been folded during his own cleanup, straightening the earpieces and offering them. "Here, you'd better put these on before Tousan and Megure-keibu come in." Then her expression changed, and the next look she aimed at Shinichi had less worry and more mischief in it. "You  _did_  tell Hattori-kun about me and... your friend... and, um--" She held her hand out at Shinichi-level and then dropped it down to Conan-height, one eyebrow up.  
  
"Not all of it, not yet, but some." Shinichi rubbed his forehead, looking at her in dismay. "Am I really THAT short?"  
  
She slid the glasses onto his face, settling them into place with one hand; the other touched his hair softly, lingered for a second. "Well, for a little while you weren't," Ran murmured, before beginning to clean up the first-aid kit debris.  
  
Heiji watched Ran's back as she carried a double handful of alcohol wipes, used bandages, and bloody tissues into the kitchen, then pivoted on his heel to look pointedly at Shinichi. One raised eyebrow asked his question for him.  
  
"Not now, Heiji," Shinichi muttered, walking across to the windows and looking down at the circus splayed across their front stoop.  
  
"Suppose it's a good thing it didn't land a meter further toward the buildings," he remarked, not actually sounding all that relieved by it, "Or we'd be phoning in for some ceiling repair as well as having a murder on our hands."  
  
"About that, Kudo, I'm worried," Heiji muttered, standing beside the shorter detective with one palm flat to the glass panes.  
  
Shinichi looked up at him. "Hmm?"  
  
"Rest've the body's somewhere, right?" Hattori made a face, staring out. "These things're usually packed in cargo planes like sardines. Kinda hard to b'lieve that just one would fall out like that... and if there's body parts in  _our_  cow, you suppose maybe there's more?"  
  
"--more--??"  
  
"More cows droppin' from the sky, more body parts." The Detective of the West made an expansive gesture with his hands, indicating another sidewalk-boom. "Y'know,  _more."_  
  
"Oh. Yeah." As Ran went back to her father's room to find a sweater for Heiji to borrow, Shinichi slid the window back open and leaned out. "Megure-keibu?" he called to the hatted officer below, who had just finished flipping his cellphone closed. "Have there been any other, um, falling cows?"  
  
Megure looked wearily up at the Agency windows and the two faces staring down at him. "Wh--? Oh, Conan-kun... and Hattori-kun, nice to see you." He sighed, moustache drooping slightly. "Four more in a line across Beika, several blocks apart. And yes," he added, "the closest three had, err, extraneous material inside. An arm, a foot...part of a calf. Ahm, a human calf. Not the, ah - well. All were frozen." His cellphone went off again at that point; Megure answered, listened, hunched down slightly and sighed again. "Hai, thank you." The phone shut with a click. "Make that seven cows,  _all_  with body parts."  
  
"Seven more, or seven counting ours?" Shinichi called down, and Megure's face did something funny until Shinichi clarified. "Um, I mean, counting that one." He pointed.  
  
"Seven total, Conan-kun." Megure's voice, bearing, everything, was tired. "Hattori-kun, do you have any ideas?"  
  
"No, but I'm workin' on 'em," Hattori called down to the inspector. "Can I be let in on the examination once we get the bits an' pieces to the morgue?" As Megure nodded wearily, turning away to answer questions from an officer at his side, Heiji towed Shinichi back in the window and sat down on the floor inside of it, between Mouri's desk and the windows. Shinichi chose to stand, putting the pair almost at a level.  
  
"Ya worry me when y'lean outta windows like that," Heiji commented, as he noticed Shinichi's frown.  
  
"No, that's not it, it's just --" Shinichi shook his head, clearly chewing over something that he couldn't quite get a grasp on. "It shouldn't take seven cows to hide one body," he mused. "And..." He shook it off with a huff. "Agh. Anyway, we at least can project a rough direction of the flight, and with a range of drops, now we can more accurately take a guess toward its time, too. Let's go ask the officers where the other six cows landed."  
  
*  
  
The line led directly towards the airport at Chōfu, a path that seemed to settle as poorly with Megure as it did with Shinichi and Heiji. That was for later, however; the line of cattle-caused destruction was enough to take up every bit of the two detectives' attention, plus that of Mouri, who seemed to be under the impression that he was in charge.  
  
Cow #1 had been the Agency Cow; number two had made a disturbingly-neat impact in the middle of a road-median two blocks away. Number three had gone through the roof of a shoestore, landing directly in the employees' breakroom and injuring two of the staff; number four had found a home in the midst of a tangle of live wires and half a telephone pole, fortunately in a back alley. The fifth cow had made another stellar sidewalk landing next to a takoyaki stand, causing a fire and some minor injuries; the sixth had taken out an imported 2008 Audi A4 sedan belonging to a local physician. And cow number seven had smacked down squarely on top of a very tall building, fifty-six stories up. It was just the building owner's bad luck that it had hit the section of roof topping the elevator shaft; they'd be finding scraps of previously-frozen meat in the gears for  _weeks._  
  
Mouri Kogoro had ended up riding with another officer over to view cows number Three, Four and Six; Conan and Heiji visited Two, Five and Seven. Poor Ran had been required to stay behind and officiate over the cleanup of the broken sidewalk and to deal with the sad fact that the busted waterpipes had been those of their own building. With any luck the water'd be back on by the time everyone returned, but so it went. "At least nobody got killed," said Shinichi philosophically to Hattori as they viewed the remains that were being fished out of, well, the  _remains_  of Number Seven. It had made an unforgettable impression on the elevator, a cow-shaped one, and now meat and mangled machinery were residing in the building's basement. "Nobody but the ones who were already dead."  
  
"Point," said Heiji. "How many hands've they found?"  
  
Shinichi checked his notepad. "Eleven," he chirped, and behind him, Shiratori-san snapped his mouth shut with a frown.  
  
"I was about to say the same, Hattori-kun. We have an uneven number of hands found, but the more disconcerting part is that we don't have all the parts of those five...and a half...people, either. Notably, we're finding mostly feet and hands and heads, but so far only a few limbs, and no torsos." Shinichi and Hattori looked at each other, worry traveling across the glance, then back to Shiratori as he continued speaking. "Beyond that, even from the scattered communication that we've managed between the seven sites, the odds of these being five  _matched_  pairs is not good. Only about half of them are matching up by way of rough dimensions or simple left-right determination; we'll have to get them all into the same place before we can say for sure which of the non-matched ones are simply shrunken from their, ahm, unofficial embalming, and which are simply odd ones out."  
  
"Kinda like the lost gloves y'always had when you were a kid," Hattori quipped glibly. Shiratori looked pained, but the expected blithely cheerful riposte didn't come, and both detectives looked around to see where the conversation's littlest member had gone. Something had caught Shinichi's eye, and he was already scampering across the scene to reach it, ignoring - as always - the shouts and protests of the professionals he darted around.  
  
When he reached it, he wished he'd let someone else find it instead. It took a very large amount of willpower for Shinichi to summon the brightness of Conan's innocent voice, and even then, he couldn't keep all of his adult's grief out of his tone as he called across the ruined elevator shaft to Hattori.  
  
"Niichan, there's one like that over here, too. Like a lost glove...from a child."  
  
Detective Shiratori Ninzaburo had, at certain past moments, come across as a rather unfeeling or insular individual. However, there was nothing unfeeling in his horrified eyes as he stared over Conan's small shoulder at the pathetic scrap of damaged human flesh that lay to one side of the wrecked elevator. The hand was just barely recognizable as such; the descent and impacts had not been kind to it.  
  
Photographed, tagged and bagged, the hand left the scene in a biohazards container, to be carried per regulations in an ambulance. Conan looked up at the shaken officer. "Shiratori-keibu, were there any other, other pieces," (he swallowed) "from a kid?"  
  
"No, Conan-kun," Shiratori said numbly, letting his hand rest on the top of the child's head with a weight that suggested he wished he could do more. "Come on. I know you like to help out at these sorts of things, but Conan-kun, please, this time, go home with Hattori-kun. Okay?"  
  
Shiratori's radio went off at that point, the staticky, brusque voice of Megure coming over the air distinctly. Shiratori listened for a moment, then turned back to Conan and herded him back across the scene toward Hattori. When they were close enough, Shiratori addressed them both.  
  
"Megure-keibu just spoke with Mouri-kun, and she wants you home right away, Conan-kun. Hattori-kun, if you'd like to stay, you'd be welcome, but in that case I'd have to assign an officer to run Conan-kun home."  
  
"I can get home on my own, Shiratori-san," Shinichi chirped. "I'll be okay."  
  
"No," answered the officer firmly, still slightly pale. "I don't think I'd be too happy about leaving you without an adult's supervision, not just now." He watched as the ambulance drove away carrying its tiny, pathetic cargo. "Not today."  
  
 _Thanks, Shiratori, but this makes things awkward._  Conan nodded, glancing up at Hattori. "We can go on home together, then, can't we, Hattori-niisan?" He moved closer to the other, looking for all the world like a tired, somewhat rattled child. "And we can talk about the case on the way home." The nudge to Heiji's kneecap wasn't visible from the front, but the other detective looked down at the boy and shrugged.  
  
"Sure, chibi-han, let's go. Shiratori-keibu? I'll be in touch."  
  
The pair didn't speak until they were past the hearing range of the officers, technicians, and detectives within the police cordon around the building. When they did, it was as Shinichi and Heiji, and the pair made fast tracks toward the train station as they spoke.  
  
"Another?"  
  
"Think so. We need to get back to Mouri's and plot out the points of the ones we know about already."  
  
"What'll we tell him?"  
  
"You can distract him while I snatch the information."  
  
"Why me?"  
  
"You're more annoying."  
  
"And what about Neechan?"  
  
"I'll talk to her."  
  
For security reasons, if not for the sickened feeling that each detective was struggling with on his own, it was better that the trip back be made in silence, and so it was.  
  
*  
  
Dinner (beef udon, ironically enough) was easily reheated; not so easily cooled down was Ran's temper, which had suffered somewhat due to her enforced absence. "Trust me, Ran," Shinichi murmured sotto voce while she began heating up the neglected dinner; Mouri was in the shower, but it never hurt to be careful. "You wouldn't've wanted to be there, not this time." Quickly and quietly he outlined what they had found, including the last discovery; Ran visibly flinched, but rallied after a moment.  
  
"I still hated to see you go like that," she murmured, turning up the heat on the lefthand burner. "Now I know the sort of thing Hattori-kun and you get into-- or at least I can guess. And I know you're not going to let up on this, you've got that look."  
  
"Look? Me? What look?"  
  
Ray eyed him sideways, her face flushed from the heat of the kitchen; pointing down at him with a pair of cooking chopsticks, she raised one eyebrow.  _"That_  look," she said, "the one you usually get a few hours before somebody calls me from the stationhouse and tells me that little Conan-kun'll be delivered in a squadcar when the paperwork's finished, and not to worry because the murderer was caught and nobody got hurt this time.  _That_  one."  
  
Hattori snickered from the doorway. "You sound like Kazuha; she chews me out the same way." There were several folded printouts in his hand, and he brandished them at Shinichi. "Got 'em, Kudo, flight-paths, shipping companies, and I marked the locations on GoogleMaps. Nice big curve heading northeast, and th' cows got dropped about the same distance apart each time. 'Cept, you know, this one big gap between six and seven." He scratched his head, frowning. "Want to go look around in the morning? And, uh..." He blinked, looking vaguely embarrassed. "...can I borrow your couch? Didn't exactly plan on staying the night or flying cows or whatever."  
  
Shinichi turned a supplicant's hopeful gaze on Ran, who snickered and addressed Hattori directly. "Hattori-kun, of course you can, but I can do you one better than that. Roll out our spare futon in Tousan's room, and sleep there tonight, okay?"  
  
Shinichi frowned. "Ran, it's a small room, there's not room for three of us at once without stepping on each others' faces."  
  
Ran casually turned back to the udon, her smirk partially obscured by a big cloud of white steam as she spoke. "That's why Conan-kun will be sleeping in my room tonight," she explained, as though it was the most obvious solution ever. As Shinichi's blush traveled all the way up to the top of his scalp, Ran stepped lithely around him and leaned into the hallway. "TOU-san, dinner~" she called, and the squeak of the shower turning off answered her announcement.  
  
"Coming, Ran-chan," Mouri hollered. "U-don! U-don! U- _don!_  Yahooo!"  
  
"I wonder if he's been drinking in there," Ran muttered, scooting back into the kitchen and parceling out servingware, bowls and napkins, with businesslike efficiency. "Go get these laid out, 'Conan-kun,'" she winked, "And Hattori-kun, the spare futon's in the closet beside the stairs, okay? Roll that out for me now, would you?"  
  
As Heiji headed off to follow her instructions, shooting an apprehensive look at Shinichi over his shoulder as he went, the smaller detective pivoted in place to address Ran. "Um,  _Ran?_ "  
  
"Oh shhh. I just want to be able to talk tonight, without anyone listening in."  
  
 _She says it like it's just that simple,_  Shinichi thought, flushed bright red, as he carried his armful of dinner implements over to the table.  _And here I was afraid she'd be_ _awkward_ _about all this...!_  
  
Dinner was scarcely laid out before Mouri, hair still wet from the shower, and Hattori joined Shinichi and Ran at the table. "Itadakimaaaasu," Mouri caroled, digging in immediately. At a more sedate pace, the younger three followed suit.  
  
"Tou-san, Hattori-kun said he thinks he found a lead about the cows," Ran said, once they'd all settled into the rhythm of their meal, and had time to mostly finish thier first servings. "He was going to go check that out tomorrow morning. You're going to be meeting with Megure-keibu, right?"  
  
"Urmhrm," answered her father through a mouthful of noodles; he swallowed, gesturing with his chopsticks at Conan and Heiji. "At noon in his office. Said to bring you two along, too." The Sleeping Detective grunted, a slightly annoyed sound; "Lead? What kind of lead?"  
  
Hattori swallowed as well, working his way through his bowl with enthusiasm. "Might be another cow," he answered casually, "maybe some place where people didn' notice it comin' in." He took another bite.  
  
"'Another cow'? How could you miss somthing like that?" scoffed Mouri, watching Hattori suspiciously and keeping pace; a scraping sound indicated that his chopsticks had met the bottom. Heiji's did as well, and the two both looked at Ran with identically-hopeful expressions.  
  
Ran snickered, smiling as she collected their bowls and served them more. Meanwhile Shinichi had an explanation for Mouri.  
  
"Maybe nobody's home where it landed," he suggested, before rushing to finish his own serving. Just as Ran handed over the second of two refilled bowls, Shinichi gulped down the end of his portion and winningly offered his empty bowl to her as well before she could close up the pot and put down her ladle.  
  
"I dunno about that," Mouri dissembled, starting on his seconds, "These cows made a big crash coming down. Somebody would've noticed."  
  
"We just wanna check it out anyway, Occhan, just t'be sure," Hattori assured him, nodding a quick thanks to Ran before digging in himself.  
  
Ran sat back to finish her portion - which was nearly gone - with a thoughtful look on her face. "And if you find one? You should call Megure-keibu right away, Hattori-kun, before you go prodding at it on your own. You don't want to disturb the scene."  
  
"Ku--uhhhh, Conan-kun an' I here aren't amateurs," Hattori assured her, emphasizing this with a gesture of his chopsticks. "We won't go divin' into anything without lookin' first."  
  
* * *  
  
"Ran?" Shinichi's light voice was a soft whisper in the darkness of the bedroom. He'd avoided the issues of potential awkwardness by staying out of the room until he was completely sure that Ran was completely and totally ready for bed, but laying in bed in the dark room, side by side on separate matresses, under separate quilts, Shinichi nevertheless felt self-conscious. "What did you want to talk about?"  
  
"Nothing in particular, Shinichi," Ran replied gently. The thin light in the room traced the line of her arm and wrist as she laid it across her chest, over the folded blankets. "I just haven't really gotten a chance to talk to you without, mm, filters, this week."  
  
 _"Neither of us is accustomed to talking without filters."_  Shinichi remembered Kid's voice, paired with the afternoon light of the coffee shop, warm in his memory. For a moment, he could imagine that the darkness of the bedroom concealed the black and blues of the thief without all his masks. The image faded as he turned his attention back to the conversation at hand.  
  
"It wasn't the schoolwork to catch up on so much's the kids," Shinichi mused, force of habit and rightful paranoia ( _it isn't paranoia if they're actually out to get you_ ) holding his voice just above a whisper. He folded his hands behind his head, regarding the ceiling. "Ayumi especially. Poor kid...I kinda wish I could let her down  _now_ , but she hasn't confessed yet, so I can't do anything."  
  
"She asked me for advice, did I tell you that?" Ran laughed quietly, fabric rustling. "She wanted to know how to become a better woman so that Conan-kun would notice her."  
  
Shinichi smiled ruefully. "I remember. You called me to tell me -- hah, to tell me that Conan had a crush on you. Well, guess what, Ran." He snickered.  
  
"Oooh,  _you_ ," Ran groaned. Her familiar tone caused them both to pause, a little flustered, before Shinichi extended one short arm to bridge the gap between them.  
  
"Ran, reach out," he whispered, and she did so, linking her fingertips with his own. "There," he murmured.  
  
In the dark, fingers just barely hooked together, it was hard to tell anything other than the sensation of touch. Shinichi's hand might've been his own, not Conan's; Ran's might have been that of the child she had once been. It didn't matter, really.  
  
"Should've told you a long time ago," he murmured. "You're dealing with it so much better than I thought you w--" Stopping in mid-sentence, Shinichi hesitated. "I... thought you'd hate me."  
  
Her voice was soft. "I couldn't hate you. I  _was_  angry, but I got over it. Now, if  _Kaasan_  ever finds out, you'll get the Shovel Speech. You know that, don't you? Shinichi?"  
  
Oh, he knew; Kiseki Eri was one scary, scary woman.  
  
"I think I'd prefer it if  _neither_  of your parents found out, Ran," Shinichi winced, hooking his fingers tighter against hers. "For now, I'd prefer this just stay between the two of us."  
  
Ran smiled, a little warmth in her chest growing as those words bent sideways and applied themselves to the link of her fingers with Shinichi's, to the teamwork of her knowledge and his own.  
  
"I agree," she murmured, rolling onto her side to face his futon through the dark. Their arms no longer stretched tight between them, but neither of them moved to fully grasp the other's hand, perhaps both understanding the illusion of equal size would be broken if they did. Ran burrowed her face deeper into her pillow, hair a soft-smelling curl around her neck and shoulders, and closed her eyes tight.  
  
"Goodnight, Shinichi. ...L...Love you."  
  
The room's dim light traced lines across the glasses lying by Shinichi's pillow, reflected back like faint twin moons from the lens. It was this thread of illumination that he watched-- Conan's mask, his safety and identity; but it was with his own voice that he answered (or near enough; what was ten years, anyway?) when Shinichi whispered back: "You too, Ran. Goodnight."  
  
* * *  
  
Morning brought clear weather, cold and sharp enough to bite; Heiji, who was once again wearing one of Mouri's old sweaters and a jacket that had (amusingly enough) been left at the agency by a certain Kudo Shinichi a year past, blew on his bare hands as they exited the train station into the brilliant sunlight. "Ne, Kudo? I'm gonna have to start keepin' clothes at your place. You know how many shirts I've ripped on cases with you?"  
  
"This didn't start out as a case," pointed out Shinichi, his own hands tucked deep into his pockets. "It started out as property damage."  
  
"Huh." Heiji thought about that for a minute. "I wonder - I mean, this isn't the first body that tumbled outta the sky at me, but it's the first one where we didn't know it was a body till after. So do the other ones count as property damage or cases, first? I mean, whether first sight trumps first impact."  
  
Shinichi shrugged, short legs double-timing it to keep up with the other's longer stride as they turned down the street that edged their proposed search area. "Pretty sure murder's a bigger poker-hand than willful or accidental destruction... like playing a Full House against two pairs." He glanced around. "Think we're getting close now..."  
  
Their path had led them to the neighborhood just beyond where Number Six had so spectacularly ended the life of an innocent foreign car; large houses and townhomes shared space with a scattering of high-priced restaurants and expensive shops of one kind or another. By Japanese in-city standards, the lawns and gardens around the spacious residences were quite large, enclosed by fences and walls for the most part and as opulent as the houses they surrounded.  
  
"Hattori, where's that map?"  
  
The Osakajin detective pulled out the requested city map, unfolding the section on which a steady curving line of points was plotted. One through six, then one outlier; between points six and seven, two concentric circles had been carefully graphed, along with guide lines. "Says we oughta be coming up on it in the next block," Heiji said, pointing with one hand in a diagonal that veered away from the orderly lines of the street. "We take a right here, an' check the, hmmm, ought to be the third an' fourth houses from the corner."  
  
Side by side the two made their way down the sidewalk. "I'd say no on the third house," answered Shinichi thoughtfully, slowing down. The residence in question was larger than its neighbors and had a yardfull of shrieking, running children playing some sort of game that involved an oversized red ball and kicking.   
  
It also contained a dog: a small, cream-colored Akita, who had planted his furry posterior beside the wooden fence dividing the yard from its neighbor. The dog was barking, a steady, tired bark that had the hoarse quality of something that had been going on for some time. One of the children came over even as Heiji and Shinichi watched, petting the animal. "Hatchiko,  _stop_ pit," said the boy irately. "C'mon, there's nothing there!"  
  
The dog kept barking, nose to the fence. Shinichi and Hattori looked at each other.  
  
"Nee, bozu," Hattori called, as the pair of detectives crossed onto the edge of the yard to approach the dog and child. "How long's Hatchiko been doing that?"  
  
The boy looked first at Hattori, then at Shinichi, suspiciously. "He hasn't shut up since last night. He was inside then, and just stood at the window the whole time, and then as soon as we came outside he went over to the fence and hasn't moved at all. I don't know what's wrong with him."  
  
"Nii-chan and I have an idea about why Hatchiko's upset," Shinichi explained to the boy, reaching out to pet Hatchiko too. The dog turned to lick his hand once before going back to his steady barking. "Has anybody looked inside the neighbors' fence?"  
  
"No!" the boy answered, cross. "Kaasan says it's rude to snoop on the neighbors. That's what the fence is there for."  
  
"Well," Hattori said, reaching down to grasp Shinichi's hands and hoist the little detective onto his shoulders, "Sometimes ya gotta bend the rules a little. S'cuse me, Hatchiko." With Shinichi standing on his shoulders, Hattori walked right up to the fence.  
  
Shinichi's reaction was immediate. "Hattori, we got 'im. There's something in the pool...all tangled up in the pool cover. And the whole yard's flooded, and the pool's level is down to about a third."  _And the water's red,_  Shinichi added silently, but there was no reason to announce that tidbit while there were children around. "Let me down and I'll call it in, and you explain to the mom."  
  
"What mom?" Hattori asked, just before a firm hand clapped over his shoulder, right beside Shinichi's foot. Hattori supported Shinichi as the boy turned and hopped down from his perch, landing in a crouch on the grass beside Hatchiko. The Akita sloppily licked all over Shinichi's face.  
  
"Hatchiko stopped barking," the other boy said, amazed, as he watched Shinichi with the dog. "Is there something over there for real?"  
  
"Yeah, there is," Shinichi said, looking away from Hatchiko for a moment (and getting his ear bathed in the meantime). "Nii-chan and I are detectives. We're here because of the thing in your neighbor's pool." He glanced over at Hattori, who was getting his business handed to him, in no uncertain terms, by a matronly figure whom Shinichi assumed must be the mother of the household. Deciding that Hattori could handle himself - or, if he couldn't, that he could at least keep the mother busy until the police arrived - Shinichi pulled out his cell phone and addressed the boy again.  
  
"Could you tell your kaasan that the police are going to come to look at what's wrong with the neighbor's place, so it would be nice if she could take everybody inside for now? I have to call them now." Wide-eyed, the boy walked over to his mother - followed by Hatchiko - and tugged on her pant leg. Shinichi took advantage of the moments that afforded him to give Megure-keibu a quick call.  
  
*  
  
Some time later...  
  
"One cow, portions of two legs and an arm, and one head." Shinichi tucked his chin down, lips compressed to a tight line as he considered that last one. The head had not been an adult's. "Did Megure say anything about fingerprinting results? Even with damage caused by the freezing they should've been able to pull prints."  
  
This cow had, due to its softened landing, come down in the most pristine condition of all eight; the pool-cover had more or less packaged the carcass and its contents, despite the partial thaw created by the water. Both Shinichi and Hattori had hopes for at least  _some_  clean residue from forensics-- fibers, non-victim hair strands, maybe even jewelry or tattoos on the corpse parts. As they walked back towards the station, the smaller detective glanced up at his friend; despite the morbidity of the situation, a flicker of graveyard humor crept into his eyes. "Can you imagine what the coroner's office must look like right now? 'Oh God, not another cow--'"  
  
Hattori snickered despite himself. "Yeah. Bet there's a lot of vegetarians workin' there." They walked on. "You don't happen t'have any contacts in the labs, do ya, Kudo? Megure's gonna be reluctant to let any info out, even to us," the Detective of the West asked, kicking at a dead leaf.  
  
Shinichi blinked. "Not... exactly," he said slowly. "But I might know somebody who could help. Go on ahead, though, will you? I need to make a call." The other blinked; then green eyes narrowed just a bit, drew together in an incipient scowl-- and then Heiji nodded shortly.  
  
"Awright. Meetcha at the train station." Hands in pockets, he left Shinichi to his privacy and his phone.  
  
 _I probably shouldn't do this. But he_ _did_ _say to call if I wanted help._  It wouldn't be the first contact to Kid regarding the case, for that matter; there'd been the text he'd sent from the bathroom... and the one after dinner...  
  
 _"I didn't expect a call so soon, meitantei."_  The voice was gravelly, rough; nothing Shinichi had heard before.  
  
"If you decide you don't want to be taking this call, I'll understand if you hang up," Shinichi began, shifting his grip on his phone. The cold fall air made the sudden clamminess of his palms even more strange. "And eventually, we should probably devise a pass and counterpass, if the both of us are going to keep switching voices on each other." A soft chuckle that Shinichi recognized well, ill-fitted to the voice that had preceded it, both relaxed the pint-sized detective and assured him that the person he was speaking to really was the Kaitou Kid.  
  
"Myself and the other detective I'm working with aren't going to be able to easily access the information about this case," Shinichi explained, feeling more paranoia than he did normally, even when Hattori slipped and called him Kudo. Glancing around would just feed his own fears, though, so he kept his voice low and his gait smooth, which helped to maintain his appearance of relaxation, though nothing about the situation was setting him at ease. "But neither of us can just sit by and do nothing, either. There's a lot of victims - but we haven't fitted all of the, ahm,  _pieces_  together to fill in the whole puzzle yet."  
  
Kid winced on his end, Shinichi's meaning coming through all too clearly.  _"What can I do about it?"_  
  
"The morgue is likely in need of a good puzzle-solver," Shinichi suggested carefully. "I'm not suggesting anything beyond information-gathering. Neither myself nor Heiji can blend in like you can - quite the opposite, actually. And what little innocuous presence I have had is a bit negated by the, mm, correlation of some of the puzzle pieces to my current size."  
  
 _"This one's too rough for even Edogawa to witness?"_  The rumble of Kid's faux voice made the question more challenging than it was probably intended, but regardless, it failed to rankle Shinichi. His focus was on the case.  
  
"Something like that." Shinichi shifted his phone again as the train station came into view, a block or so further down the street. "I'm not even sure if you'd be able-- and that's  _not_  a challenge, simply a statement of my unfamiliarity with your methods."  
  
Kid snickered.  _"Rest assured, tantei, it wouldn't be my appearance that would give the game away. I would be more concerned about acting the part."_  
  
"You've mimicked officers before," Shinichi countered.  
  
 _"No, it's the case information that would be hard to duplicate. And if I chose someone low enough not to be privy to all the details...well, there's the same problem that we have now, isn't there?"_  
  
 _'we have.'_  The words had a certain resonance in Shinichi's ear. Kid was - intentionally or not - grouping himself and Shinichi on one side. As allies, even.  
  
"Only if you think you can do it. There are eight, ahm,  _envelopes,_  and a variable number of puzzle pieces has been found in each. I need to know how many full sets those pieces add up to, and what kinds of sets. I can't get any clue about the who behind this until I know some of the what."  
  
 _"I'll try, tantei,"_  Kid promised, in his normal voice.  _"Get me what information you do have, and your best guesses too. If I have any luck, I'll let you know."_  
  
"Thank you," Shinichi murmured, as the line went dead.  
  
In the Kuroba mansion, Kid sat back in his chair, letting the back of his head come to rest against the wall behind him with a tight, close-lipped sigh.  
  
"Young master?" Jintarou looked up from his paperwork at the far end of the table, then flinched as Kid bounced the back of his skull off the wall. "...I leave you to it, then," he murmured, turning back to his registers.  
  
*

 


	15. "Germaphobe, three piece suit, taboo"

They'd lucked out on the trip back; their traincar was almost empty except for a noisy handful of middle-schoolers down at the other end. So, side by side, Shinichi and Heiji had their end of the car to themselves. They still kept their voices down, but the rattling clack of the train itself was enough to ensure security for the most part. "Any good?" asked the Osakajin, indicating the boy's call and still looking a little prickly about the whole matter.  
  
"Won't know 'til later." Shinichi sighed, scrubbing at his head; his headache was waking up again. "Maybe... maybe not. Depends on a lot of things."  _On his paranoia. On how much of a challenge Kid thinks this is. On how curious I made him. On how much he really feels like helping. This isn't about me, not this time; it's tangential, but it's not about me, and I don't have the right to expect him to react like it is._  That phrase, though, the one containing 'we'; it chased away some of the unease, and mentally Shinichi tucked the memory of it away in a safe place to think about later.  
  
"Hm." Hattori eyed him sideways. "Gives a whole new meanin' to 'don't ask, don't tell', doesn't it?" At his companion's snort of laughter the other detective prodded Shinichi in the ribs with a finger. "Speakin' of telling... What was your girlfriend on about you and--" He mimicked Ran's hand-motion from the night before, Shinichi-high down to Conan-low. "You have some sort've temporary growth spurt, Kudo?"  _And why didn't you tell me?_  his expression asked, somewhat hurt.  
  
The boy rolled his eyes. "Yeah, less than a day long-- not a cure, just an experiment. Ai has this theory she's working on, something new; this time was a hell of a lot rougher than usual. I don't want to do  _that_  again for a long time, not unless it's permanent." He shuddered before dropping his gaze, a hint of a smile creeping in. "That's when I, y'know, told Ran. We, uh, spent a lot of quality time together; or at least we did until I had to change back." The look he returned was apologetic... and a little embarrassed too. But only a little.  
  
Hattori's expression hopped quickly from surprise to a rather lecherous grin. "Ahahaaa, made sure t'get your money's worth, huh? Kinda like shore leave, yeah?" Shinichi shot him a baleful glare, and the Detective of the West wisely chose discretion as the greater part of judgment.  
  
"So, ah, whether'r not we can get a hand from your friend, we still gotta figure out what our next move is, with these cows." Hattori's expression sobered as he brought the conversation back around to its point. Reaching over, he ruffled Shinichi's hair with one hand as he mulled the problem over. "Not t'be a pessimist, but I'm not banking on catchin' the guy just from whatever little prints they pull offa Hatchicow," Hattori mused. Shinichi elbowed him in the kidney, and Hattori looked down with more annoyance than pain. "Awww, c'mon, the pun was just  _waiting_  for me!" The smaller detective sighed.  
  
"Whatever. You're right, though, we're going to need something more substantive to prove foul play - even if there were fingerprints on the outside of the cow, the case could easily be made that the body parts were concealed within the frozen flanks when a handler, or someone on the shipping line, touched the cows. I think going after motive would give us the most information, but to do that we need to know who was killed. And that brings us around to our starting point again." Shinichi sighed, rubbing at his temples. "It's starting to look like we can't do anything until we know the identities - or at least demographics - of the victims."  
  
"Think we could surmise some'v it?" Hattori lifted his hat to ruffle his hair, smoothing it back as he replaced the ballcap - backwards, of course. "Eleven hands at least, maybe more, and all in the same shipment of beef, means there's good odds that all the folk were killed around the same time period. Mass-processed beef like this processes an' ships pretty quick, so it's not like the murderers were fitting bodies into these cows over a couple'a weeks. Probably more like a couple'a days."  
  
Shinichi frowned. "Loading the bodies, yes. Killing them? Not necessarily. If the murderer has free enough access to a meat packing plant that he - or she - can conceal bodies this way, it's also logical to think that the bodies could be kept on ice for a period of time before they needed to be disposed of. What I can't figure out is why choose such a blatant method? The shipment can easily be tracked to its originating plant."  
  
"Maybe that's what they're banking on?" Hattori suggested. "We could be lookin' at a frame job."  
  
"Maybe, but even  _that_  seems too obvious." Shinichi frowned. "The more I think about it, the more this looks like a faux frame - an attempt to frame an opponent by making it look like the opponent was framing the killer. Or killers." He paused for a moment, gears turning quickly behind his eyes, then continued in an excited, quicker tone. "And the method was chosen to make the murders look less crafted than they were! I'll wager that one layer of the fence will be a claim that this was a crime of passion - and that would lead me to believe that the bodies are related to each other."  
  
"Well sure they're related," Hattori agreed, vaguely confused. "They were all found together, mixed up."  
  
"I mean," Shinichi clarified, looking up at his friend with excitement, "I think this was more intertwined than even that. There were children's and women's body parts in the cows, correct?" At the other end of the car, one of the middle school students looked up in alarm at that, and Shinichi hunched down to hide behind Hattori, and lowered his voice. "As gruesome as it sounds, if we frame this as a familial murder rather than a series of random killings - and obviously, we'll have to wait on evidence to prove this theory - then things begin to come together. Then it makes more sense for all the bodies to be mixed together. Wouldn't it take more effort for the killer to spread the body parts among various cows if they were doing it gradually? The thawing and refreezing process would be much more laborious that way than if they batch-murdered the whole group, then mixed and divided the bodies. If they were banking on the cows being distributed across a wide range before the parts were found, decomposition in the human parts as they thawed over time and at different rates, depending on cooling conditions in each of the destined delivery locations, would make it near-impossible to rematch the mixed bodies - and obscure the total number of corpses represented."  
  
Hattori blinked down at his small friend, whose eager, nearly gleeful expression and intensely focused eyes were at the moment reminding Hattori of some sort of horribly intelligent hunting dog proudly presenting its kill. Perhaps a terrier.   
  
"Sometimes, Kudo, you scare me."  
  
Shinichi saluted his larger friend with an ironic eyebrow. "Says the guy who spent an entire train-trip back to Osaka trying to one-up me by text on the most foolproof ways to dispose of a body... Time to play Devil's Advocate now. Hmmm." The look of concentration deepened, blue eyes thoughtful. "Three things," and Shinichi began counting off on his fingers. "One: just as a possibility, this could also be a group related by other links-- poverty level, geographic location, et cetera." He shrugged. "Two: those body-parts? if the rates of relative thaw match, I'm wondering if they were frozen at the same time as the cows instead of separately, which'd mean that the window of opportunity to insert the pieces would be much smaller, both by place and time. And three: whether or not the faux frame hypothesis works,out it's still possible that the cows were dropped accidentally rather than on purpose. Have you ever seen how they get shipped? The planes have a kind of mechanized belt system with meatooks; the carcasses are hung from the hooks one after the other like coathangers in a closet and cranked into the cargo bays. If the belt wasn't locked down, the cargo'd shift back against the hatch and..." He made the same hand-motion that Heiji had made the night before. "Steaks from heaven."  
  
Hattori gave his fellow detective a disbelieving look, then ignored the joke. "So," he said thoughtfully. "Maybe we oughta see if any've these planes landed with damage, huh? Just in case. The family thing, though... that's a lot of bodies to go missing.  _Somebody'd_  notice, wouldn't they?" He scowled, shoving his hat back. "Unless they were paid not to talk, or the family tended t'take long trips, or they were threatened, or-- Kudo? You know anybody down at the precinct in Missing Persons?"  
  
"Oh... maybe one or two."  
  
* * *  
  
The main Beika City police building was located not far from a major train station, so it took relatively little time to reach. Shinichi'd texted along what little information they already had to his 'contact', hoping it would help: times of cow arrival, numbers of body-parts, approximate distance and location between sites, et cetera. That done, now Edogawa Conan stood on tiptoes at the building's reception desk, just barely able to peek over the top. The uniformed receptionist, a gray-haired matronly type, smiled down at him and greeted him by name before typing his name in; Heiji got a bit more of a once-over, though he'd been there often enough.  
  
"Two to see Chirokawa-san, Oba-san. Is he in?"  
  
Visitor's badges were passed over. "Of course, Conan-kun. Some days I wonder if he ever leaves." The woman looked a little resigned. "Go along, now, you know where his office is. Don't forget about the shoes," she added as they left.  
  
Hattori blinked. "Shoes?" He glanced down at his feet; as the building was not a residence, they had kept on their outdoor shoes rather than changing into scuffs. "What about shoes?"  
  
The boy beside him wrinkled his nose. "Chirokawa-san's a bit of a germaphobe. We get along okay because I don't pitch a fit over his ideas on sterile procedures, but he won't let the rest of the Shonen Tantei in the lab. Just follow my lead, okay? And don't touch  _anything_  unless he hands it to you."  
  
*  
  
The sign on the door said  _NO ENTRY WITHOUT SHOECOVERS/GLOVES. THIS MEANS YOU._  Hanging on a hook beside the doorjamb were two bags, one full of blue vinyl gloves and the other with the sort of baggy elastic-topped one-size-fits-all[shoe covers](http://www.valutek.com/IW_Products.m4p.pvx?;PRODUCTS_NO_TREE?company=val?cat=CSHSKID) usually found in hospital clean rooms. Without comment Conan dug into the second bag, carefully knotting the toes of his pair so that they'd fit more or less over his small feet; beside him Heiji looked on, nonplussed.  
  
"Feet condoms? What kind of whacko  _is_  this guy, Kudo? We're not visitin' Forensics, this is Missing Persons..."  
  
The smaller detective pulled a pair of child-sized gloves from his backpack, snapping one at the Osakajin. "You wanted a contact, you got a contact."  
  
"Iiii dunno 'bout this," Heiji mumbled, nevertheless covering his hands and feet as directed. When both detectives were ready, Heiji knocked firmly twice. There was no immediate answer. He had just turned his attention down to Shinichi's level, preparing to say something, when the door rattled and jerked open. Heiji looked up into the brass bell of a souzaphone.  
  
"...Um?"  
  
"Hold this!" a voice rapped from behind the instrument, and the horn wobbled in front of Heiji's nose, insistently demanding his attention like a large metal puppy. Hesitantly, he took it from the hands that held it, then held it aside (over Shinichi's head; there was only so much room in this doorway) to look past at the person who'd offered it.  
  
A thin man with an irregular cloud of fluffy but sparse white hair, stooped over his desk, waved one (rubber-gloved) hand behind himself in the general direction of the doorway. "Come in come in, or go out go out, I don't care, just stop letting the air in!"  
  
Heiji held the souzaphone out of the way so he could stare at Shinichi.  _Are you friggin' serious?_  his expression clearly read. Shinichi just rolled his eyes at him, then addressed the bustling, cranky man within the office.  
  
"Chirokawa-san, that's an 'out,' right?" he asked, perky Conan voice on about 80% power, pointing helpfully at the souzaphone as he did so.  
  
"Yes, yes, an out! An out. It's not mine, I don't want the filthy thing. It has  _spittle_  in it. Some bright bulb decided to leave that in my office, as though I'm the only thin man with white hair in the building! That belongs to Waldo Butters, down in the medical examiners' offices. I don't even know how it got up here, is that even in the same building? It's probably not, I would bet it's not, just-- Augh. Put it in the hall."  
  
"Yes, Chirokawa-san," Shinichi answered obediently, shooting a pointed glance at Heiji.  _Well? Do what he said!_  
  
The souzaphone went into the hallway, ending up with a muted  _clank!_  onto the tiles some ways away from the office; still eyeing Shinichi as if wondering where the joke was and just who it was on, Heiji closed the door behind him and propped himself against it, arms crossed. The office itself was as eccentric as its inhabitant, and as Shinichi navigated around a stool that was taller than him, Heiji's bemused gaze wandered from one end of the room to the other. Neat rows of file-cabinets reigned surpreme, festooned here and there with yellow sticky notes; lists and charts and graphs were pinned to all wallspace, overlapping to the point where you couldn't tell if there was actually a bulletin-board underneath or not. And  _they_  were covered with yellow sticky notes too. Past them a desk stood in overcrowded splendor (or lack thereof, mostly lack), piled high with files and books and files and legal-pads and files and forms and files and... more yellow sticky notes. Everywhere.  
  
"There's a note on your elbow," said Shinichi to Chirokawa-san helpfully.  
  
The elderly man blinked, peeled off the note (which said  _DRY CLEANING @ LINMEI'S 4:30 TUESDAY_ ) and stuck it on the front of the nearest file-cabinet, lining up the edges in careful precision with the note beside it. Actually, all of the sticky notes in the room were the same precise shade of yellow, and were lined up with absolutely rigorous, meticulous symmetry to whatever they happened to be stuck to. All of them, every one.  
  
Heiji took all of this in with a quiet amazement, allowing Shinichi to take the fore as Chirokawa-san settled himself behind his desk, adjusting pens, sticky notes, and the angle of his chair so that all laid in perfect parallelism and perpindicularity to each other. "What was it you wanted to talk to me about, Edogawa-kun?"  
  
"The cows, Chirokawa-san," 'Conan' answered, pulling a little stool out from a nook between filing cabinets and hoisting himself up onto it -- after carefully checking to make sure that all four of its legs were placed in the precise centers of the floor tiles on which they rested. "I wanted to know about who was in them."  
  
Chirokawa-san, who seemed to find absolutely nothing wrong with an apparent seven-year-old asking for classified and almost certainly horrific information regarding numerous murder suspects, switched his gaze from the boy's face to Hattori's casual slump against the door. "Can your guest be trusted?" he asked as if the Osakajin (who had stiffened in absolute indignation) were nothing more than a particularly unsightly piece of office-furniture rather than the sole offspring of 'Oni' Heizo, Chief of the Osaka police precinct, yadda yadda yadda.  
  
"Absolutely. Don't let his appearance fool you; he's almost as bright as I am."   
  
Sparing Heiji one last suspicious glance, Chirokawa-san harrumphed and pulled a single file out of a perfectly-aligned stack of identical files. "Yes, well then. The cows, as you say--" He cleared his throat and began to read aloud.  
  
* * *  
  
And afterwards--  
  
"'A bit of a germaphobe'. Right... Kudo? You know the weirdest people."  
  
"Who, me? --watch out for the souzaphone, Hattori. Ooops..."  
  
* * *  
  
The [text](http://twitter.com/Dductshn/status/6012511462) Shinichi had sent him didn't explicitly mention the cow case at all, though Kid knew the odds were stacked against the summons actually being unrelated. He'd been waiting for the contact for about a day, having done what work he could on his end; doubtless, this was a business call...well, of sorts. Still, Kid found it hard to keep the mischevious grin from his face, exchanging [several](http://twitter.com/1upin/status/6013063896) [quick](http://twitter.com/Dductshn/status/6013237507) [texts](http://twitter.com/1upin/status/6013397151) [with](http://twitter.com/Dductshn/status/6013592649) [Shinichi](http://twitter.com/1upin/status/6013803839) [as](http://twitter.com/Dductshn/status/6013930354) [he](http://twitter.com/Dductshn/status/6013956578) [dressed](http://twitter.com/1upin/status/6014009162) [for](http://twitter.com/1upin/status/6014048820) [their](http://twitter.com/Dductshn/status/6014151155) [meeting](http://twitter.com/1upin/status/6014645144) and made his way to the cafe. The distance he had to cover wasn't negligible, but covering significant lengths in a short span of time was a talent he prided himself on. So, as Shinichi's [most recent](http://twitter.com/dductshn/status/6014852686) text pinged into his phone, Kid was walking in the doors of the cafe, smiling at the homey jingle of bells on the door. A waiter came up to greet him, but he smiled and waved one hand to dismiss the man.  
  
"Thank you, but I'm meeting [Enomoto-san](http://onetruthprevails.com/Azusa_Enomoto#Azusa_Enomoto) and Edogawa-kun."  
  
"Ahhh, they're a bit busy at the moment," the waiter -- who had served, and been befuddled, by Kid and Shinichi the last time they'd met at this  _Poírot Café_  -- chuckled. He smiled guilelessly at Kid, not recognizing the thief, even though Kid's makeup was very light, disguising little of his facial features. Save for his contact lenses, the main component of Kid's disguise was actually his clothes. Vastly different from his civilian fare, or his normal uniform, they flattered his figure and completely changed his apparant nature -- one of the easiest costumes he owned, yet one of the ones - save for anything involving women's nylons - he had to be most delicate with.  
  
Proceeding past the waiter and through the cafe, Kid nudged his way gently through the kitchen doors as though he had been invited, because he had been. As he expected, Shinichi's ladder was propped close to the swinging door, and so Kid was careful to edge his way around it as he entered the staff-only area, warm from the baking ovens and imposing kettles of soup simmering over low heat. With a respectful nod to the distressed young woman he could safely assume to be the owner of the stranded cat, Kid introduced himself.  
  
"Good afternoon, Enomoto-san. I'm Takeda-san, a friend of Edogawa-kun's parents. He sent me a little message saying he'd be here -- has he gotten into any trouble?" The voice he chose for this costume was rounded and warm, full of lush vowels with a definite Westerner's accent. His makeup and grey contact lenses gave Kid the appearance of mixed ethnicity, adding a bit of Occident into his strongly Oriental features. In the three-piece charcoal grey pinstriped suit he'd chosen, he looked every inch the part of a young, ambitious businessman with both traditional and Western connections, and as he'd hoped, Enomoto-san was sufficiently impressed.  
  
Kid tipped his head back to look up the ladder. "Good afternoon, Conan-kun," Kid said, his affected persona and voice allowing him the indulgence of an unprofessionally warm inflection. "Do you need a bit of help with the little neko-chan?"  
  
There was a brief pause at the top of the ladder, both of movement and of the low-voiced muttering that had been just barely audible: "--notgoingtohurtyougetyourOW!clawsout'vemywristbeforeOW!OW!okaygreatjust _stay_ upthereforallIcare--" Conan's head swiveled; he blinked, did an almost visible but very quick mental recalibration... and yelped. "AAGH!" When he jerked his arms back from the half-closed cabinet, they were full of rather large amounts of cat and the cat's mouth was full of thumb. "The 'little neko-chan' is doing just wonderful," he gritted out between his teeth.  _"I_  may need surg-- err, I mean... no, no, I'm fine. Enomoto-san? Could you take him?" The cat bit down again, and Conan quivered. "Please?"  
  
Enomoto-san, a thin-faced young woman in a waitress's uniform, backed away wide-eyed. "Oh no, Tenshi-chan doesn't  _ever_  let anybody hold him. Just drop him."  
  
 _Thud._  With an evil glare, Tenshi-chan slunk away across the kitchen floor as the boy gingerly made his way down the ladder. Three feet from the ground, he found himself lifted - gently, and firmly - off its rungs and set down on the floor with a gentle hand. 'Takeda-san' crouched to the boy's level, smiling at 'Conan-kun' as he turned to face him, holding one hand out between them. "Is your hand okay, Conan-kun? Tenshi-chan seemed to have a pretty firm grip there..."  
  
Startled into stillness, the other blinked. "Uh-- fine, I'm... fine." He looked at his own hand; the scratches and bitemarks weren't severe, mostly indentations and fine white clawscrapes rather than gore-dripping punctures. He shook it out, flexing slightly-chewed fingers with a wince before glancing back up with a small grin. "It's good to see you... Takeda-san." He'd fished the name out of Kid's conversation with the waitress, obviously, and now the grin widened slightly as he took in the suit and tie. "Thanks for coming to see me; Kaasan says you're awfully busy these days, what with the stockmarket and all those nightclubs..." Pausing in his extrapolation for a moment, the boy turned a blue-eyed look onto Tenshi-chan's owner. "Enomoto-san, could we get some coffee? Ran-neechan won't mind so long as I put a lot of cream in mine, you know that."  
  
A few minutes later found them both settled into a booth, steaming cups before them. From one corner of the room, Tenshi-chan elevated a hind leg and began washing in an improbable pose.  
  
With an amused glance at the cat, past Conan's ear and over the top of the low booth seats, Kid opened their conversation with a casualness that was comical only to the two of them, both in on their own private joke. He had smoothly unbuttoned his suit jacket as they sat down so that it wouldn't buckle or strain, and his waistcoat, of the same pinstriped wool as his suit, showed his trim figure and contrasted well with the rich sapphire blue of his necktie. A tiny green clover tie tack kept the satin in place.  
  
The thief's smile, delivered over the rim of his coffee mug, was an expression all in his eyes. "How've you been, Conan-kun?"  
  
"Okay, Takeda-san. Heiji-niisan's been visiting us, did you know? He's at the precinct with his father right now, though, all day long," he chirped back, mostly for Enomoto-san's ears as the waitress walked past to greet another couple, glancing back at them and smiling as she passed. The  _Poírot Café_  was fairly quiet that afternoon, low light from the street filtering in and gilding both their faces as if with a brush. The added emphasis to the last sentence was very slight indeed but still there, and, Shinichi hoped, would allow a little more of a feeling of security to their conversation.  
  
Dropping the chirpiness (and lowering his voice), the detective allowed a real grin, teeth and all, to replace his Conan-smile. "Pinstripes.  _Nice_  suit; you look a little like a '30s-era gangster, all you need is a carnation in your lapel. And maybe a violin case." In truth, the suit... suited the wearer, and very well; Shinichi was aware of a trace of envy in his voice. He was also aware of an odd shyness, just a little-- this was the first time they had met face-to-face since his return to his diminutive state. _Not the first time he's seen me, though,_  and Shinichi knew that with a peculiar certainty. The prospect of being watched should have bothered him, but it didn't, somehow; the whole thing was more  _I've got your back_  than  _I'm behind your back,_  and was kind of comforting in a bizarre way.  
  
He noticed something, smothering a grin; "Enomoto-san thinks it's nice too," he murmured, watching the young woman as she stole another glance; there was a distinctly appreciative glint in her eyes.  
  
Kid glanced over at the young waitress, not entirely falsifying the warmth in the tiny smile he sent her way. As she all but jumped in response, flushing bright red, and bustled away to her work, Kid turned back to Shinichi with a self-satisfied smile twisting his smirk.   
  
"I enjoy this outfit," he murmured back, savoring a mouthful of coffee to pace himself as he spoke. Truth be told, he was riding high on a buzz of excitement and adrenaline, and the effort of holding it back - to keep its associated vibration from ruining his chosen persona - was distracting him a bit. It hadn't been that long since he'd seen Shinichi in person - no more than a week and a half, twelve days on the outside. But he still puffed up a little under the detective's praise.  
  
"I don't get many excuses to wear this one out," Kid explained, smoothly shifting position where he sat so he could cross one ankle over his knee under the table. "Seeing you seemed like as good an excuse as any." Before either of them - Shinichi or Kid himself - could get hung up on that phrasing, Kid propped one elbow on the table and leaned forward with a conspiratorially gleeful expression, one finger tapping his lips thoughtfully. "So you have news for me, my little informant?"  
  
 _That_  term earned the thief a distinct warning look, the kind that in other circumstances might have been accompanied by a sedative dart, high-velocity soccerball or other kickable projectile. "Four-letter word," muttered Shinichi, before letting it go. "Anyway-- yeah. According to the search-radius that Missing Persons is running, we're looking at a non-Asian population group, mostly male, young adults and a few children possibly from a very impoverished region demographic. And one anomaly, an Asian male in good physical shape... from what they can tell. Ring any bells with your own research?" He took a long drink of his cofee, making a face at the cream-pale surface.  
  
"From the discussion I was able to listen in on - which, I'll warn you, was precious little - nobody at the morgue really believes that they were nationals. With the exception of our anomaly, none of them were accustomed to flouride in their water or the anatomy of a toothbrush. Determining familial ties will have to wait until the DNA testing comes back, but they're betting on it." Kid paused for a sip of his coffee, which was tinted with considerably less cream than Shinichi's. "They  _have_ determined that the bodies were killed and promptly frozen in batches, not all at once and not individually. Some batches of them seem to have been stored at sub-freezing temperatures for a couple months, perhaps; others have almost no, erm, 'freezer burn,' you could say. They're planning to match up the body parts within those sets - like several small puzzles before they put together the big one."  
  
Another sip of coffee paced the conversation, giving Shinichi a moment to contemplate what Kid had revealed so far before he went on.  
  
"I also did some poking around at the police station, since I got so little of use from the morgue. They've identified the shipping flight that dropped the cows, as well as the company that was to receive the beef shipment. Hoshi Gyūniku, which has a warehouse presence in the Koto ward in Tokyo. Normally, they get their beef shipments from Narita, as you'd expect, but this particular plane was routed through  _Chōfu_  Airport."  
  
Kid let that little tidbit sink in for a moment, knowing Shinichi would understand the significance as well as the thief himself did. The majority of the flights routed through Chōfu, a much smaller airport than Narita, were commercial sightseeing and vacation trips to the islands south of Tokyo. Under the management of the Tokyo Metropolitan government, Chōfu, located in the northeastern quarter of the Tokyo metropolitan area, also regularly landed a small number of personal flights and private planes. A large freight flight like the one that had dropped the cows was not at all typical of Chōfu's usual schedule.  
  
"They quarantined the remainder of the shipment once they'd tracked the plane down...all of the beef in it has been declared unsafe for consumption, of course, and they're thawing it to look for any remaining puzzle pieces. Problem is, Hoshi Gyūniku isn't talking about where it was getting this beef from, and the plane's manifests are full of bogus information. Dead ends." Kid frowned deeply, stirring an extra spoonful of sugar into his already saturated coffee. "And it's obvious what  _that_  looks like."  
  
The boy nodded, frowning as well; for a moment, their expressions matched each other's with almost uncanny symmetry-- had Kid not been wearing contacts and makeup, the effect would have been even more striking, and as it was Enomoto-san (who'd been watching from across the café) paused in stacking saucers, momentarily nonplussed. After a moment her face cleared, though, and she went on with her work.  
  
"A cover-up," said Shinichi thoughtfully, "but is the company covering up their own activities, their sources, an outside activity or a future line of revenue? It almost always comes down to money or territory when you have a high body-count. And there's this," he murmured, ticking off points on his fingers. "Why were the bodies frozen at different times? And why in batches? And mostly," he tipped his head back, staring unseeingly at the windows and street beyond, "why were there no torsos? Hands, heads, even feet, you can pull identifying information from these-- but torsos? What makes a human torso so valuable? What kind of use can you put a torso to that you can't use a... wait." He blinked. "Did you hear anything about... were the heads, ahh, mutilated in any way?" The question was posed almost clinically, but the sickened look in Shinichi's eyes was anything but clinical; he drank again from his cup, watching his companion over the brim.  
  
"I didn't hear, no, but I see where you're heading," Kid murmured back, shaking his head slightly. "The possibility had occurred to me, as well."  
  
The words  _organ farming_  were written on both faces, and not all the coffee in the world could make it palatable.  
  
Eyes from a head, heart, lungs, liver and kidneys from a torso, even solid bone, bone-marrow and certain membranes; if a 'donor' was newly dead enough (and a murderer who had the facilities for this sort of thing could surely choose his time, couldn't he?) the blood could even be drained and processed. Black-market organ sales were nothing new, and while the risk factor was high the profit margin had to be astronomical... if you were the sort of creature who could view human beings as so much two-legged cattle.  
  
How... appropriate. Shinichi placed his cup back down on the table, cold queasiness settling into his stomach.  
  
"If," the detective said slowly, choosing his words with care, "you were looking to provide the market with-- this particular product-- you'd need a viable source from which to obtain it. Non-Asian, low-income; bad teeth, you said? I wonder if the hands and feet were calloused. A purely adult set of victims would lead to a farmed population of homeless victims, but there were children... and that'd mean a more widespread group." Shinichi grimaced. "A third-world country of some kind, maybe? Work camps, labor programs, some place out of the way where the lure of food or money would bring in victims that wouldn't be missed." He sat back, appalled.  
  
"We can't yet rule out the possibility that the bodies were planted," Kid reminded his companion, forcibly dragging both of their imaginations away from the gruesome details of Shinichi's suppositions. "Nor that they may have been planted to appear planted."  
  
"A reverse frame?" Shinichi wondered, and Kid nodded, then shook his head slowly.  
  
"I need internet." He spoke with less horrified distraction and more precision, more aggressiveness, than before.  _As ironic as it sounds,_  Shinichi thought to himself,  _It's just like he's on a case. I wonder if I look like that._  
  
Kid raised a hand to summon a wait staff; Enomoto-san perked up and came swiftly across the floor toward them. Just before she drew close enough to hear, Kid looked to Shinichi with layers in his glance. "Would you take care of the tab here? I'll meet you in half an hour in the library. Bring a laptop if you own one...I want your help on this."   
  
And he left. Behind him at the table, Shinichi glowered down the sidewalk at the thief's receding silhouette. "Oh,  _sure,_  stick me with the check  _again_ ," he grumbled, pulling out his slim walletful of yen. "He's such a cheap date..."  
  
The squeak at his elbow drew Shinichi's attention to Enomoto-san, who was flushed bright pink and staring at him as though she'd never seen him before. "A-ah, C-conan-kun, did you need s-something?"  
  
 _What? Why's she so--_  Mentally backtracking, Shinichi felt himself do what could only be described as a whole-body cringe of dismay.  _Oh. My. God. Eeeep! Uhh....._ "N-no, no, just... for my uncle and me? My uncle? You know?" He held out money a little desperately to ward off the rattled waitress in much the manner that Van Helsing might have brandished a cross. "On my... mother's side? We had, um, had coffee?"  
  
Enomoto-san looked at the empty seat opposite the boy, then back at Conan, then back at the seat and then back at her customer again. If the wheels in her head had turned any faster, the noise would have been deafening. "Y-your uncle?"  
  
"My uncle. Absolutely my uncle." Eyes wide and all but glowing with his best Absolutely Sincere Conan aura, Shinichi held out the money again. "And now I have to go, thankyouverymuchandIhopeTenshi-chandoesn'tgetstuckagain,jaaa!"  
  
He was out the door and pounding up the stairs to retrieve his laptop before the bells had stopped jangling. Behind him, Enomoto-san watched the door settle shut, shook her head and began clearing the table. Tenshi-chan brushed against her legs as she picked up the cups and she glanced down at the cat, muttering beneath her breath:  
  
"...kids these days, honestly..."  
  
* * *  
  
Kid looked up from his laptop screen when Shinichi came into the library. Sprawled across Shinichi's favorite chair, knees hanging over one arm and shoulders braced on the other arm, Kid was already surrounded by a veritable nest of research paraphernalia: papers, opened books, documents protected by plastic sleeves and others dotted with post-its and scribbled notes. A big mug of coffee stood on the table nearish his seat, and all the lights in the library were on, flooding the room with illumination. But the windows - except for the skylight - were covered by thick draperies that Shinichi had never noticed before (or had they even been there?), and the detective relaxed somewhat at the sight of them, his concerns about a security risk shrinking.  
  
"Took you long enough," Kid greeted him, a raised eyebrow standing in for an actual wave, as both his hands were busy - one on the keyboard, one holding a book open beside the screen for easy comparison.  
  
"But I'm early!" Shinichi complained.  
  
"The early detective catches the murderer," tsked the thief; Shinichi rolled his eyes, heading for the kitchen for some coffee of his own.   
  
From the doorway he surveyed the tableau of Kid, computer, paperwork and coffee; his eyes crinkled in amusement as he watched the other work. Aside from the context, it was very much like watching a large cat, comfortably ensconced on the best and softest cushion, perfectly at home and licking its paws. This particular cat, _Felinus Japonicus,_  had made itself very much at home indeed; and rather than feeling like an intrusion, the impromptu settling-in made the Kudo house feel more welcoming than usual rather than otherwise.  
  
It was nice, actually.  
  
It was also rather astonishing, more than astonishing-- not that Kid was so adept with research, that was a given; but that he would pour so much energy and time into something that was neither a heist nor had anything to do with one. "How long've you been working on this?" Shinichi asked curiosly, scooting up onto the couch and booting up his own laptop.   
  
"Since you brought me into the case," Kid responded bluntly, his tone indicating he thought the answer rather obvious. He glanced away from the screen only briefly, then turned his intent focus back to his screen. "Should I have started on it when the cows came home to start with? Also, my coffee needs refilled."  
  
Eyebrows on the rise, the detective mulled this over. His first impulse (a startled mixture of gratitude and annoyance) flickered across his face, and he made no effort to hide it. His second impulse, however, was born of the usual insistent urge towards data, any data, the determination to connect the dots. "And I thought I was a workaholic," he muttered, pulling up his latest data and checking a few responses in his email. "But, um. Thanks."   
  
Shinichi typed his own notes up, adding a few observations to the ones he'd detailed out earlier in the day prior to their meeting at the  _Poírot Café_ ; but this only kept him occupied for a few minutes, and eventually his curiosity got the better of him (as Kid surely knew it would.) "So. Observations? Opinions?" He saved his document a final time before hooking one foot beneath the other and sitting back expectantly. "I know better than to think that you wouldn't have any."  _Though,_  Shinichi added silently,  _I'm still surprised you're cracking down on this so hard. Murder's not your usual field of concern, Kid; why are you so caught up in this?_    
  
Paradoxically, it wasn't the thief's morality that was in question, not in the least; nobody who had 'No-one gets hurt' as the first and abiding rule of their heists could be the sort that stomached murder. That much Shinichi was absolutely certain of. And admittedly? It felt unexpectedly good, knowing that the other was working on the case as well. Still...  
  
Never mind. He was just grateful that Kid's incisive, inquiring intellect  _was_  applying itself to the case, because he had the feeling that this one was going to need all the help it could get.  
  
Kid glanced up at Shinichi - specifically, at how Shinichi had actually removed his hands from his keyboard - and then turned his focus back to his own keys, where his fingers were still restlessly tapping. He scanned the screen, attention catching on one particular paragraph and looping back to read it in closer detail, as he answered the detective. "I told you my observations already: my coffee's empty." To help Shinichi bridge the cognitive gap, Kid held out his mug demonstratively.  
  
Okay, gratitude or not... Shinichi considered several responses, hit on one, and quite meekly slid off the couch. It was the work of a moment to retrieve the thief's cup and not much more than that to locate the rather elderly jar of instant coffee that his mother had once bought out of curiosity.  _Good thing the Krup's got a hot-water dispenser,_  he thought cheerfully as he added in several spoons of sugar.  
  
Without a word he delivered the cup, slipping back onto his seat and settling his laptop into place. "Did you get those files I sent earlier?" he inquired, all innocence.  
  
"I did," Kid answered, looking over his screen to briefly meet Shinichi's eyes. "Though with Chirokawa-san's information, much of it becomes expansion of data points we already know, rather than introduction of new information. It's fairly easy to assume that a loading door breach - or a belt failure, really it's a chicken and egg problem - caused the cows to drop. And Chirokawa-san has confirmed that the body parts, scrambled, were frozen in un-scrambled batches. What we don't know for certain is whether the ratio of cows to batches is one to one; obviously, the batches were scrambled after dissection and freezing, before they were bovinely interred."  
  
Kid paused for a sip of his coffee, ignoring its scalding hot temperature. He swallowed, then glanced over the rim of the cup at Shinichi, one eyebrow raised in startled regard. With a faint smile and a short nod, Kid acknowledged the accuracy of Shinichi's hand at sugaring a cup of coffee to suit its recipient, then set the drink aside and turned back to his screen, scrolling briefly while he continued speaking.  
  
"We've established that most of the victims were of a similar demographic and likely uniform national and local origin. What we haven't addressed yet is the presence of the single outlier. His - well, we presume it's a 'his,' but 'hers' wouldn't change anything - hands don't show the abuse that the other pairs do; he's from a different social class, and likely a different ethnicity. A visitor, perhaps, to the site of murders; whether he was there for business or pleasure isn't sure. But with more accurate dental and genetic records in populations of higher economic standing, he stands as our best chance to identify the source of origin for these bodies. We simply need to identify him...and then shadow his every step."  
  
"Hm; post-mortem surveillance; not the first time I've done that one." As he watched Kid take another sip  _(He can't_ _really_ _like instant, can he? It's like where bad coffee goes to die)_  a thought occurred to Shinichi and he sat his own cup down, feeling slightly queasy. "You didn't, um... see the remains, did you?" That single pathetically-small hand had featured unpleasantly in his dreams the night before; finding out that it had been accompanied by several more hadn't helped.   
  
"Some," Kid answered, the line of his mouth tightening a bit. "Enough." Another pause, another sip of teeth-rottingly sweet coffee, and Kid visibly shook the thought away. "Let's get back to work, Tantei. There's miles to go before we sleep."  
  
* * *  
  
Kid - and presumably Shinichi - had long since lost track of the volume of coffee - in varying degrees of quality - that they'd consumed. Evening had shaded into night, and both stomachs had begun to growl rather obnoxiously when, finally, the breakthrough came. Kid read over the text he'd found twice, to be sure of himself, and then forwarded the long, complex URL via PM to Shinichi. The [book](http://books.google.com/books?id=uCP9Rgj_H_YC&lpg=PA73&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false), "Marketing Beef in Japan," made available by the infinite wisdom of the Google Overlords, contained a wealth of information about the production, preparation, delivery, and sale of beef and steak in Japan, and - buried somewhere in the middle of all of this - a priceless clue.  
  
"Tantei. The link. Page one hundred six." Kid's voice was soft, intent, nearly reverent. He waited a few moments for Shinichi to find and begin reading the page.  
  
When Shinichi spoke a moment later, his normally-high child's voice was lower in pitch than usual, slow and exact and very thoughtful; it could almost have been mistaken for his normal adult voice. "The beef was frozen; therefore it wasn't intended to see a Japanese butcher or be consumed by the Japanese market. What grade was it?" Without a pause he pulled up a screen of notes and answered himself: "Low-grade, not heavily marbled, the kind of beef that's considered cheap even by international standards, much less the Japanese market...at least, that's what it was according to Hoshi Gyūniku's sorry excuses for shipping manifests.  
  
"So: we have carcasses that should never have made it over here. ...That were never meant to be rendered into cuts? Meaning they wouldn't go through as stringent an inspection, probably just some paperwork jockey-- being sent from locations unknown via a small airport to some plant where they'd be processed as-is, rather than being checked over for safety. Maybe. Probably. If I wanted to see a cow and its cargo turned into something unrecognizable, just... meat..." Shinichi stared unseeingly at the screen, lips taut in a thin line. His voice, however, remained clinical and precise. "...I'd have it ground up. But we've already established that the end product was never intended to reach markets for human consumption -- well,  _probably,_  dependent on the fact that the meat in question is utterly unmarketable domestically, and wherever it was shipped from, it  _could_  have been marketed...but wasn't... so this meat wasn't meant to be food in the first place. And in any case ground beef of that kind would require butchering to separate the larger bones from the useable meat. Therefore, to dispose of everything, bones and human remains and any possible forensic evidence--"  
  
Despite the detachment with which he'd been speaking, there was sick loathing present in his eyes when he focused on Kid again. " _Pet food._  Canned, processed petfood. A nice, simple way of disposing of inconvenient human waste left over from surgical procedures... particularly if you already have a working pet-food plant. Profitable, too; after all, if it's in a can then it's already been inspected, right? Nobody'd look twice at it at that point, you'd just feed it to your dog or cat-- thousands of individual disposal units, all working to get rid of the evidence." Restlessly Shinichi pushed the laptop away, sliding it onto the table. "God. I wonder how long this's been going on?" The rage that didn't usually show during a case was present this time, clearly audible; clinical objectivity only went so far.  
  
With sympathy to his companion's anger, Kid's next words were offered quietly. "January, fifteen years ago, as near as I can see," Kid murmured quietly. "One shipment every three months or so. The archived flight records at Chōfu show years of small freight flights just like this one, quarterly, belonging to Hoshi Gyūniku."  
  
Over the course of their relationship - ranging from the very first meeting at the clocktower, through the trial by fire to their current library sessions and text message meetings - Kid had discovered that he reacted to crisis differently than Shinchi did. In general, where Shinichi got hard and focused, Kid lifted himself above the problem, establishing an emotional and analytical distance between himself and his subject. Chill dispassion was his first recourse, the foundation of his Poker Face, and his most reliable way to be sure that the challenges he faced were conquered with logic, not rash emotion. Where passion, dedication, and obsession drove Shinichi through his cases to their completion, Kid was propelled by a competitive urge that didn't just share a border with, but set up shop and threw a  _party_  in, the realm of the neurotically, absurdly perfectionist.  
  
In most cases, the net result was comparable: Kid and Shinichi had been, and continued to be, each other's primary and ultimate rival, their talents perfectly balanced, their enthusiasms gleefully symmetrical. But when the heist at hand was more precious than silver...when it dripped 'precious rubies'... then Kid's ability to remain detatched became a liability rather than an asset. Coldhearted against the petty anger and frustration of those he thieved from, Kid was ill-equipped to open his heart to the sort of profound pain that Shinichi challenged, armed to bear against it, on a daily basis. When it came to the victims of murder, and their families, Kid's heart had room for the remembrance of only one.  
  
Shaking thoughts of his father from his mind, Kid turned his attention back to his computer screen. Shinichi would be the one to confront the criminals and close this case; Kid could best provide aid from the shadows, which would protect both himself and Shinichi from implication. His next task, Kid decided, would be the search for more conclusive proof that Hoshi Gyūniku's quarterly shipments were in fact wrought of the same cruelty that had created the most recent eight cows and their cargo. With only flight records, the link was a shaky one; more conclusive evidence would reinforce and solidify Shinichi's argument that Hoshi Gyūniku was an active participant in the murders, not just an innocent recipient of a misdirected cargo, as it would surely claim. The quality of meat would probably be recorded, in the past flights' inspection records, as a higher grade than it actually was; well, that simply represented one more layer to divorce Hoshi Gyūniku from the pet food processing plant they surely owned in the Koto prefecture; one more layer that Kid would remorselessly rip free of the company's defenses.  
  
He shifted in his chair, resting his temple against its back cushion, and folded his toes under the arm of the chair, burying them in the crease between arm and seat cushion to warm them. The house was chilly and the vast ceiling of the library seemed to be just  _waiting_  to be given a noise loud enough to be echoed back at the studious pair in its center. Kid shifted again, restless; he'd been perfectly content just a moment ago; why was he now---  
  
Belatedly, Kid recognized his instincts for what they actually were.  _Shit,_  he cursed, rolling silently out of the chair, leaving his notes and laptop scattered in his wake. With a finger to his lips to silence Shinichi, Kid flew from the room, headed out the main library door, then hooking a sharp right at the next available minor hallway.  
  
In the kitchen, the cellar door rattled and clanked open.  
  
"Hell, Kudo, whatcha hold this thing shut with, a bank vault? I hadta all but slam inta it to get it t'open."  
  
 _ **Oh. No.**_  
  
Given the right impetus, the wrong thing can be the right thing at the right moment. Or vice versa. With totally ruthless (but regrettable for his laptop's sake) logic, Shinichi snapped his small computer shut, shoved it directly down the gap between the couch-back and cushions, and then slid sideways with a grab at his coffeecup. He cursed audibly and virulently as coffee went, very deliberately, everywhere-- onto the notes in particular, though not actually doing any damage in particular but making one holy hell of a mess. Under the couch went his mug; into the seat in front of Kid's own laptop he went himself, and off went the laptop's switch,  _beep._  
  
"Dammit, Heiji, knock or something next time, will you? Aargh--"  
  
What Hattori Heiji saw when he entered the room was a) one coffee-soaked, swearing Kudo, b) one laptop cycling down into an unplanned shutoff, and c) dripping notes and couch and chair. Spattered and wearing a lapful of fortunately-tepid liquid, Shinichi waved a handful of wet paper at him. "Towels in the second drawer by the sink--"  
  
Heiji trotted out of the room to the kitchen, and reappeared in the hallway outside the library just as quickly, bearing a large handful of well-worn kitchen towels. "Jeez, Kudo, tell me you've got a guest over, won'tcha? I about walked straight into her."  
  
Before Shinichi had had more than a moment's time to boggle at that statement, Heiji fully entered the room, stepping to the side as he did. From around the tall Osakan detective's shoulder came a very familiar head of long brown hair, and an even more familiar voice.  
  
"Mouuuuu, Shinichiii, this is a mess! What did you do, try to juggle your coffee mug?"  
  
Aghast, Shinichi stared.... at Ran. At Not-Ran. Not-Ran frowned back at him, stepping past Heiji and tsking at the flood of coffee.  _Oh this is... is... going to go pear-shaped any second now. It's going to go pear-shaped so much it'll sprout leaves and support a partridge,_  he thought faintly.  
  
 _Any second now._  "I, uh. Sorry, Hattori. We just were--"  _Researching?_  "--talking. About the cows."  _Aaaaany second now, yeah._  He gave the other detective his best attempt at a smile; it emerged from hiding as a grimace.  
  
To Hattori's side, 'Ran' flushed light red, busying herself with rescuing and drying off the papers and notes scattered across the carpet and table in front of the couch. Hattori looked askance at her, adding things up in his head that didn't quite amount to any clear sum, though they  _looked_  like they'd make at least two different kinds of sense. Setting his confusion aside, he addressed Shinichi with a frown. "Well, great, even Neechan finds stuff out before I do," he grumbled.  
  
"Good thing your parents won't see this stain for a while, Shinichi," 'Ran' sighed, diverting the topic before Hattori could continue or Shinichi could look too much more awkward. Settling the damp papers into a small stack, she brushed off her lap and rose to her knees, turning her attention to the mess on the seat of the couch. "And now I'll have to get a new cup of coffee, too. At least yours didn't spill. Is it still warm?"  
  
"Y-yes," Shinichi gritted, trying not to show displeasure as he choked down a mouthful of Kid's brew - which, because of his own damned morbid curiosity, had continued to be refilled with rather disgusting instant over the course of the evening.  
  
"That's good," 'Ran' murmured, clearing spaces on the couch now for Hattori. She sat down on the end of the couch that was nearest Shinichi, leaving the other two thirds for his fellow detective, and laid Shinichi's small laptop across her lap on top of the pile of damp papers.  
  
Hattori - and Shinichi - blinked at it. "Wasn' there just one laptop here a minute ago?" Hattori wondered, looking from one to the other.  
  
'Ran' raised an eyebrow at Hattori, unimpressed. "No, it was right here the whole time. Under the papers. See? The corner's still all wet from the coffee." She wiped it off with the cuff of her turtleneck sleeve before popping the lid open and booting it up. "I'm just glad I'd closed it before you made a mess of everything, Shinichi."  
  
Not-Ran had her accusing look down  _pat._  It just wasn't fair. "Sorry, Ran," he answered meekly. The look softened a little, and he blinked; how the hell did Kid DO that? Shinichi stared in fascination; he could tell the difference, but it was just...  
  
"Anytime you two're finished with the soulful looks an' all, you want to tell me what your 'researching' dug up?" asked an amused, slightly irate Heiji. "'Cause I spent the resta' the whole damn day followin' my Tousan around and listening to bureaucrats. Wasted time. The old man wanted me down here so's he could introduce me to half th' damn police force, or at least the ones I didn't already know." He sighed, settling back expansively against the cushions and shoving his cap halfway over his eyes. "Still wants me to join the force the easy way," Hattori muttered from beneath his hat. "Not gonna happen." He blew out his breath in a sigh.  
  
"Did you hear anything the officers were talking about?" 'Ran' asked, tapping lightly, almost hesitantly, at her keyboard, while she paid more attention to Heiji than to her internet browser. Shinichi watched 'her' hands move, fascinated with the difference in manner and attitude that Kid brought, even to details like that, in his disguise. 'Ran,' meanwhile, was still talking.  
  
"We found out some things. The cows that landed around here weren't beef like you can buy at market, even at Azusa-san's -- she's very nice, but her cuts of meat aren't always as good as her vegetables. Anyway, these cows were much lower quality. Shinichi thinks that's because they weren't meant for people to eat them; he said that they're, um, for pet food." 'Ran' looked upset and awkward at this, hiding her face behind a fall of her hair as she focused on the computer screen. Even though her gaze was shielded from Hattori's sight, 'Ran' didn't send a single glance in Shinichi's direction - not a single bit of a hint for how to proceed next. And as though the presence of the aggressive detective beside him was no concern at all, Kid, in disguise as Ran, simply resumed his research while he waited for Shinichi to pick up the conversational slack.  
  
 _Think of him-- her-- as Ran. Act like it's Ran, don't flinch. And... don't lie if you can manage it, not to Hattori._  Easier said than done, but this had so, so much potential to go sour; the best thing Shinichi could do was trust the thief to do what he was best at. Trust; it always came down to that, didn't it?   
  
Story of his life.  
  
"Pet food's just the start," added Shinichi a little grimly; he forced his shoulders to relax. "Arms, legs and heads, no torsos; Heiji? Have you heard any rumors of an organ-farming ring operating internationally? Not a new one, the company we're looking at shows records of similar cargo going back at least fifteen years." The disgust he'd felt earlier was allowed to permeate his words, but he kept his focus on the detective instead of 'Ran'; the more distraction, the better. Quickly he outlined what they'd dug up, beginning with the information regarding the company and ending with his and...'Ran's'... speculations regarding the organ-farming operation.  
  
Hattori pulled the brim of his cap even lower, the bill flattening out against the couch-back behind him. "So; we got Hoshi Gyūniku, a freight company who can't keep their paperwork straight an' usually ships through Narita but still keeps sendin' smallish shipments once'n a while through Chōfu. We got substandard beef that's been frozen instead'a chilled. We got bodyparts that've been bagged and tagged at different times, and the original owners weren't 'xactly possessed of shiny whites." He scowled.  _"How_  far back didja say? Fifteen years?"  
  
"Shinichi thinks it's at least that long," 'Ran' confirmed, her voice strong but fighting to stay so. Just like the real Ran's always held a note of quivering emotion beneath her iron will. With a frisson of illicit glee that tensed muscles all across his body, the same electric, addictive thrill he always got while pulling off a successful con, Kid licked his lips and turned to Shinichi, looking for confirmation of 'Ran's' claim. "Couldn't the shipments to Chōfu have been for something else, though?" he asked in Ran's voice, threading a note of hope through the words that sounded weak to even his own ears - just as he meant it to.  
  
"I... don't think so," said the boy slowly; yes, he realized that this was just part of Kid's keeping in character, but it was an avenue of conjecture to consider. "Their paperwork may have been falsified, but it's hard to completely eliminate fifteen years' worth of data. What we need more than anything right now is to establish where the victims came from, and that includes our anomaly."  
  
 _...and what I need, right now, is a kiddy-sized dose of valium. Or one of my own darts. And for Heiji and Not-Ran to be in two very, very different places. When did Ran say she was coming back from that thing with her mom? Seven-thirty?_  His hands were sweating where he gripped Kid's closed laptop, Shinichi noticed, stealing a glance at the clock across the room. It was two short of seven, and oh he was so screwed...   
  
It was the rumble that saved him just then, the growl emitting from Heiji's stomach. The Osakajin shifted, one green eye peering from beneath his cap-brim. "'Scuse me. Didn't have time for lunch," he muttered, and then snorted as an answering and very indelicate grumble emerged from the young woman between himself and his fellow detective. "Hey, Nee-chan, sounds like you could do with a little somethin' yourself. You oughta make Kudo cook now, after all those times you had t'fix his dinner--"  
  
A lightbulb went off; choruses of angels sang a discreet  _Hallelujah!_  above Shinichi's head, and he grabbed his chance with utter grattitude. "Dinner! Mouri'll be howling for it any time now and I'm starving-- Hey, Hattori? Can you head home and keep him from drinking himself into a stupor? Ran really hates that. We'll pick up something on the way and meet you there."  _Please? And Kid can get away and I can call Ran and have her meet me at that dim-sum place on Toriyama and there must be a God Of Detectives somewhere, He probably wears a deerstalker and plays the violin--_    
  
"Uh, yeah, sure," Heiji nodded, aiming a puzzled glance Ran-ward. She didn't speak, just smiled lightly at him; Heiji looked back to Shinichi with a shameless expression. "Double portions on mine, yanno."  
  
"I know, I know," Shinichi answered impatiently, shooing Hattori toward the door. "G'on. You don't get any food if Mouri's drunk when we get there."  
  
"Goddamn slavedriver," Hattori grumbled, toeing his shoes on. "You two better go get food right away, y'hear me? No time for googly eyes, I'm starving!"  
  
'Ran' challenged him with her look. "See you in a few, Heiji-kun," she said, underlining the implied  _Leave now, plz._  
  
The back door clicked shut behind Heiji and Shinichi slumped against the couch, exhaling loudly. "Shit. That was too close. Ran's gonna be here any minute..."  
  
"I'm right here, Shinich--" Ran - the real Ran - slowed to a halt in the genkan just past the front door, and her shopping bags clunked to the floor beside her shoes.  
  
*

 

 


	16. "Apologies, helmet, tattoo"

_  
_ _References this time around include tarot, Aoyama's other works, The Usual Suspects, Finding Nemo, and two lines of dialogue quoted from and as an homage to Joisbishmyoga's "Deal". Find them all and win a prize :D Warnings include pink (again), decapitated heads, and shamefully blunt foreshadowing._

  
*  
  
Kid stood. "I'll be leaving now," he murmured, using a voice that was neither his own nor Ran's.  
  
When he was gone, Shinichi hopped down from the couch and moved quickly down the hall to Ran's side. She had sat down on the raised step of the genkan, her shoes beside her, house scuffs held distractedly in one hand.  
  
"Shinichi?" she said in a careful, controlled voice that nevertheless had a distinct  _this had better be good_  quality to it, "Just what happened here--? In ten words or less. Because if you take too long to tell me, we're both going to regret it." Running beneath her studied calm was an undercurrent of serious anger, not the sort that led to sharp, painful words but the kind that led to something worse: silence.  
  
The boy swallowed hard. "Research, Hattori showed up, Kid improvised, Hattori left, you're here?" Shinichi offered, his face completely serious. And held his peace, waiting.  
  
"But... why me? Why look like me?" The anger was still there, the undercurrent was still dangerous-- not hurt, not quite, but still full of undercurrents that could drown better impulses unless the waves were given a damn good reason not to.  
  
"I'm not sure. Maybe because he already knows how?" Shinichi hesitated, thinking hard. "This place, it's been... kind of a safe haven, neutral ground. Kid's used to being paranoid, setting things up in advance; I-- can't be sure, but if I were him I'd take every precaution I could, and that would include something like, like..." He groped for words. "...like this." Small hands clasped together over his knees, Shinichi sighed. "Known qualities; as little left to chance as possible-- he really did have to improvise, Ran. Hattori damn near kicked the back door in, you know what he's like; bull in a china shop sometimes. What do  _you_  think he'd do if he found Kid without any defenses up?"  
  
"What do I think he'd do if he found Kid, at all," Ran murmured softly. She reached forward, taking both Shinichi's hands in her own and pressing a soft kiss to his tiny knuckles. "I shouldn't care so much. Appearance means so little, now." Warmth touched her eyes at this admission, warmth and wry self-awareness. The world saw a young woman and a child on the genkan step; Ran and Shinichi just saw each other.  
  
"But to see him, as me - I knew him as soon as I saw him, it was something in his eyes, even if it wasn't obvious, I mean, we don't know anyone else who can do that --" Ran shook the tangled attempt at clarification away. "To see him sitting with you like that, in my, um, 'skin,' I guess...it was like he was another woman. I--" Now she snickered, realizing the absurdity of her feeling even as she said it. "It was like I caught you with another w-woman!"  
  
Scarlet-faced, Shinichi shook his head. "Well, you didn't. And hey, jokes aside... they do say that imitation's the sincerest flattery, right?" If he kissed her, really kissed her in the shape he was in, it would feel-- awkward; wrong. So he repeated the same gesture she had made, brushing his lips very gently against the back of her hand where it gripped both of his. Her skin was soft, the bones strong and graceful beneath his lips; and he--  
  
 _(tendon and muscle, knots relaxing, soothed into smoothness as fingers and thumb worked them out of tension into peace, bones strong and graceful beneath his)_  
  
\--and he blinked. What. The. Hell?  
  
Ran answered his confused blink with a quizzical look of her own. "Did you think of something, Shinichi?"  
  
Confused, oddly shaken and feeling like an incredibly important and completely invisible clue was staring him  _straight in the face,_  he frowned and shook his head once, hard. "Not sure," Shinichi muttered. "Let's just go, okay? We need to pick up dinner before your dad orders out again. Remember the last time?" It had involved both alcohol and pizza topping choices, and the smell of kimchi mixed with tomato-sauce and cheese had permeated the agency for days.  
  
Ran shuddered, pulled the boy to his feet, and a few moments later the Kudo house was dark and silent once again.  
  
* * *

> _Tantei,_
> 
> _I owe you an apology. The situation was dire, but a hasty exit would have been better than what I chose, I think. I just didn't want to leave the planning, the cover story, the explanations, all to you. I admit I feel very possessive over our discoveries so far. I am as much a part of solving this case as you._
> 
> _Still...that was one disguise I'd promised myself I wouldn't take again, now that things have...progressed between you two. And us._
> 
> _I'm sorry. To both of you, but especially to you._
> 
> _Kaitou Kid._

  
  
The private message had been waiting for Shinichi after all the dust had settled-- dinner, case discussion, et cetera. Heiji had given Ran a puzzled look or two, but a surfeit of steamed pork and vegetable dim-sum had taken up most of his attention. Mouri had been remarkably sober and had actually talked over his most recent investigation during the meal; of course, he'd used it as an object lesson to point out 'helpful tips' to the Detective Of The West, causing a vein in the Osakajin's forehead to visibly throb. Shinichi'd eventually pleaded a headache and fled the room, temporarily borrowing his usual futon back along with a little privacy.  
  
And now he stared at the email and wondered how to answer.  
  
They'd talked more on the way home, he and Ran; the whole mess had gradually downshifted from 'issue' to 'over'; and by the time they arrived with their arms full of take-out bags the topic had turned to other things. If the young woman's eyes had dwelt on Shinichi with a thoughtful look in them on occasion, well, there was cause; and if little Conan had been quieter during dinner than usual, that wasn't so unusual during an open case.  
  
His screensaver (random fractals at the moment, replacing the usual childish screenshots from Kenyuu Densetsu Yaiba) blinked on in a flare of rainbow-and-black as he sat crosslegged, back against one leg of Mouri's bed, thinking hard. Despite the gruesome nature of the case, the day had been a good one; Shinichi'd had the morning to work alongside Hattori, taken time for coffee with his 'uncle', and then had spent the afternoon and evening juggling research with Kid. He was used to the tandem-harness feel of his and Heiji's investigative style-- sometimes it meshed well, sometimes it didn't, sometimes they completed each other's sentences and sometimes they tripped over each other's feet.   
  
But working alongside Kid, that had been  _different._  
  
There'd been very little duplication of effort; the thief had been ruthlessly efficient in his research, stalking lines of inquiry with all the skill that he used when setting up his insanely-complicated heist preparations. Not a surprise, of course, but-- they'd talked a lot, throwing conjectures and possibilities back and forth like a pair of well-trained jugglers who had met by chance and found out that, surprise!, they knew similar routines.   
  
He'd enjoyed himself, Shinichi had. Kid had shown a talent for ferreting out the oddest details... It had been more than interesting, working with him; it had been a pleasure. Watching that singular, multi-talented mind corral its own instincts and focus on one effort, one line of inquiry--   
  
The screensaver flashed to a new design, casting reflections of spirals and Mandelbrott-inspired sequences in his Conan-glasses, now folded neatly and laid aside. Slowly he reached for the keyboard and began to type.

> _  
> Kid:_
> 
> _Apology accepted. We both ought to know by now that Murphy's Law has a special clause for detectives (and thieves, apparently): 'If the situation can in any way become even more FUBAR'd, it will.' Ran even asked me to pass along a message when I talked to you next-- 'Never do that ever again or I'll dislocate your kneecaps' and 'My hair actually looked pretty good.' If you're worried about the kneecaps thing, try sending her a flower or something._
> 
> _I understand the possessiveness all too well, and I agree, you're as much part of this as I am. And you know, as weird as it got, it was still MUCH better than it would've been if Hattori'd found you there._
> 
> _Shinichi_

  
  
*  
  
 _Shinichi--_  
  
Kid tugged on the lock. It held, so he exchanged the lockpick in his right hand for a thinner one and tried again, twisting the wires delicately between his fingers.  
  
 _It's a funny thing that you mention Murphy. While he may have a special clause just for you troublemakers, we thieves he holds in highest esteem._  
  
Sweat dripped across his brow as he worked, running away from his eyes because of his position. The blood that drained toward his head made his eyes pound and his temples tight; he blinked the irritation away and focused more sharply.  
  
 _He is, after all, dedicated to the proliferation of entropy and chaos. Thieves, especially those who work on a grand scale such as myself, are merely his tools._  
  
A soft click warned Kid that the lock had given. Lockpicks quickly slipped between his lips to hold them out of his way, Kid got his hands under the safe door only moments before the secondary bolts drew back from its rim and the whole twenty-pound contraption dropped straight into his hands. His shoulders and biceps screamed with the sudden burden; if he'd been at any other angle, it wouldn't have been so bad. But hanging upside down from the ceiling an arm's length away from the safe, so that when the door detatched, he had to hold support it with outstretched, already fatigued arms? Not so easy. Biting his lip, Kid drew the door - and its cargo - toward him.  
  
 _The thing is, I've never yet had opportunity - or reason - to test what might befall one of Murphy's lockpicks in the occasion that it began to close locks rather than open them. And while I don't have a single flicker of conscience regarding what I'm doing to help you, I can't help but notice how many formerly uncrossable Rubicons the pair of us have traversed in the course of this last few months._  
  
To bring the safe door to himself, straightening his back and shoulders as he simultaneously pivoted the door in his hands, arms slowly tracking the quarter-circle between horizontal and vertical, was a feat of athleticism and gymnastic strength the like of which he hadn't performed for a long time. Every movement had to be smooth, every inch traversed had to meld effortlessly with the one before and the one after. Kid craned his neck back, tipping his face toward the floor, as his arms drew vertical and the safe door came to rest, held tightly by tired hands, directly under his head. He surveyed the mercury lever balanced on the door's center with a critical eye.  
  
 _As our... 'advanced acquaintanceship' approaches its sixth month, I find myself wondering whether by illegally aiding Beika's legal defenders, if I'm not actually causing more mayhem, in a macro 'balance of things' sort of way, than I ever did before. What, after all, is more chaotic and worth Murphy's blessing than for one of his own tools to buck its proscripted role?  
  
I'm getting philosophical again. Forgive me...it's not my intent. Spending too much time with you tends to do this, unfortunately. I enjoy myself so very intensely for the first few hours...and then in comes the existentialism. Perhaps it's a side effect of our similarities - neither you nor I can define ourselves by the narrow, neat categories of body, identity, and name, that most of Murphy's playthings take for granted. In my case, even genetics abandon me: as far as the law knows, my roommate is myself. You and I know this isn't true._  
  
A mercury lever, similar to the one that Shinichi had encountered in the Toto Tower bombing incident, required the utmost deliberation and care while disarming it. As delicately balanced as an egg on a spoon, a tiny bead of mercury sat ensconced within a metal loop. For the bead to roll to either side and touch the wire meant detonation. Any impact - even the slightest nudge, if it was sudden enough - might set it off. So it was with extreme concentration that Kid held the safe door and its burden still, not even daring to shift a finger's grip on its edges, while he worked.  
  
 _I never had anyone else to know that fact before you. The Magician and I were the only two to know that I was of my own for the longest time. Jintarou, too, I suppose, and my mother...but they expected my arrival before it happened, and they knew our father. Somehow that makes it feel, to me, as though their knowledge was cheatingly gotten. At least, in comparison to yours. You worked for your understanding of myself, and my Magician...or is it, the Magician and I, his Fool?_  
  
Kid manipulated the lockpicks in his mouth carefully. First he worked them all the way to one side with his lips and tongue; then, with that end pinched between his lips, allowed them to pivot downward, pointing toward the lever and safe door in his hands. The dexterity of his lips allowed him to work both picks further up into his mouth, getting a grip on them with teeth and palate; then, carefully, he slid the point of one of them forward with his tongue, extending it past the other to begin his work.  
  
 _You're likely boggled by this point. I've never confided in you very much, despite showing you so many of my vulnerabilities. Without the decoder key, I am just so much as a scrambled lot of letters and numbers, puzzle pieces with the corners trimmed off.  
  
Well, don't worry. You'll never see this letter, this decoder key...I've no plans to even write it down. I can just repeat it to myself, and to the Magician, as many times as I want, and never worry about finding the stamps to post it. And it's better that way, anyway... 'Cause you don't need to know how very vulnerable I've made myself to you, and how deeply this truce of ours runs. You're one for guilt, too...and I can't visit the guilt of feeling obligation toward a lonely man on you, either._  
  
The strain of lifting the safe door toward himself was immense. Both arms straining, elbows folded out to his sides, Kid brought the door straight up, toward his face, until the mechanism beside the mercury lever was close enough to manipulate with the lockpick in his hands. One eye closed to keep his vision clear, Kid slowly and delicately poked and prodded at the lever's wiring, attempting to isolate and detatch the one that would cause detonation. With about five minutes' worth of grip left in his hands, he made a breakthrough. Refusing the urge to grin because the expression would ruin his aim, Kid angled the lockpick in the proper direction, hooking its tip around the base of the wire, and prepared to yank.   
  
 _The 'heist' at Suzuki Jirokichi's house comes to mind, as I try to imagine what your reaction up to this point would be. To save Lupin, he caught on to something that you, also, understand: I'm just as capable of being directly_ _asked_ _something as any other person. All but a tiny handful of the world interacts with me solely through challenge and chase, and obviously, I love playing with them in that way, even as my work holds more importance than they know. It's amusingly simple to distract them from the other option that exists there, the one concealed in my left hand as my right performs the tricks._  
  
Around that moment, the bracers around his ankles, which Kid had affixed to the joint of the ductwork just past the open grating through which he was hanging from the waist, creaked with a worrisome metallic sound. A few pops sounded, as rivets and lynchpins gave out or were wrenched free. Kid dropped from the ceiling, legs and hips banging painfully against the walls of ductwork as they were forcibly dragged out of there, along with the rest of him, by the demand of gravity. The safe door fell ahead of him, tilting wildly to the side as it toppled from his startled grip. The mercury lever closed.  
  
 _I will keep working my best legerdemain on you, Tantei, because it's such a thrill when you walk directly around it. But - as I know you know, though you don't realize it yet - even as I perform for you, I will give my all to keep you from seeing that left-hand choice._  
  
It was probably ten minutes before Kid found the strength to sit upright. Sprawled painfully across the safe door, its mercury lever and detonation mechanism driving sharp, uncomfortable angles into his kidneys, Kid decided he was just grateful he hadn't swallowed one of his lockpicks. Sure, he knew how to take a fall - so did Kaito, thanks to Aoko - but that didn't mean he had to like it.  
  
Kid rolled off of the safe door and its lever, swatting irritatedly at the small device beside the mercury lever. Wired to a small explosive no more powerful than a child's firecracker and triggered by the lever, the device had set off a small bell, accompanied by a little pop-up sign which read:  _"You lose!"_  
  
"Benten and broken mirrors," Kid cursed, kicking the safe door away from him with one booted foot. Flopping back onto the floor, arms and legs spread, he stared up at the ceiling of his practice room with a frustrated scowl on his face. When he failed a challenge, the lights of the room flicked on automatically - harsh, bright fluorescents that erased shadows from every corner of the medium-sized, clinically tiled room. Various brackets and boltholes on the walls showed where other challenge setups could be attached; a large rectangular box cut out from one vertical wall, like the one on the ceiling, was made to fit a variety of mocked-up vault doors and locks. Scrapes, dents, and corners of broken tile (ceiling and floor) proved that the room had seen constant, heavy use since its creation.  
  
Kid turned his wristwatch around to check the time. It was past two already. He'd started his workout around midnight, maybe a little bit before; just as soon as he'd settled his nerves enough to begin, actually. He'd been working on the  _ductwork+ceiling vault+mercury lever_  combination for a week or more now, and something always managed to go wrong. He was beginning to realize this was going to be one of Those challenges - like the  _habenero+balance beam+limited oxygen_  and the _pressure-floor+chain pendulum+suction cups_  ones had been. Well, it wasn't unwelcome.  
  
Not far away, the illusory click of dress shoes on the tile floor drew his attention.  
  
"Rough night?" Kaito asked, hands folded behind his back.  
  
 _Why am I on this case with you? The truth? Because you asked me to be. You asked me to come close, and you'll have to ask me for your distance again if you ever want it back._  
  
Kid sighed, wrapping a vague grumble into the sound, and closed his eyes. "Yeah."  
  
 _Yours,  
Kid._  
  
* * *  
  
 _Next time I decide to do this? Somebody threaten to duct-tape me to a chair. Or at least, remind me to put on extra socks..._  
  
It'd become something of a habit lately, an embarrassing one if Shinichi ever got caught-- and he was perfectly aware, thankyouverymuch, that he was fulfilling all sorts of anime introspective-character stereotypes. But really, rooftops were a good place to think. And the makeshift not-quite-rope ladder he and Kid had put into place not all that long before was still there, and he couldn't sleep, and everyone  _else_  was asleep, so...  
  
Midnight had come and gone an hour or two past, maybe (probably) more. It was probably worth noting that Shinichi'd taken to keeping a blanket tucked behind the bookcase nearest the window that he'd been using; if he was going to brood, at least he was going to do it comfortably. So now he sat, warmly wrapped and with an extra sweatshirt layered over his pajama-top, high on the Mouri agency's roof, staring at the moon.  
  
Insomnia was an old, old friend. The detective'd long since stopped treating her as an enemy and began courting her as an ally, back when he was still young enough that he kept a flashlight hidden beneath the bed to allow for surreptitious reading; if you had to be awake, why be miserable as well? And anyway, curled up in the three-sided space made up of an A/C unit and two disused chimneys, it wasn't so bad so long as you kept your face well out of the wind. Muffled to the eyes, Shinichi had no intentions of transitioning from Beika City's youngest detective to Beika City's youngest human popsicle.  
  
And he needed to think. Badly.  
  
There was a scuffmark on the asphalt-like surface, two meters away and right on the edge. Absentmindedly Shinichi catalogued it,  _shoesole, small, white rubber tread;_ made by the right foot of a lightweight person as they scrambled onto the surface from below, probably using a rope as an aid in climbing or possibly even an accomplice’s hand... His scuffmark, in fact, from the first time he'd met Kid up here. Why? To talk, to pass the time, to bullshit like friends do, to get another perspective...  
  
 _'Perspective'; oh hey,_ _ **there's**_ _a good word. Think maybe it’s a clue, Kudo? --no, really??_  
  
Perspective was the problem. Heiji’d said something, just an offhand thing after dinner when Mouri and Ran were discussing some sort of followup-trip the Sleeping Detective was planning regarding his missing persons case. It’d had to do with some of the data Kid’d dug up from police files; and Heiji’d shot one of those sharp, green-eyed Looks of his:  _You’n Ran didn’t dig_ _this_ _up, did you? Not to be throwin’ stones, but… Kudo, you’re sure this’s all watertight? Wouldn’t put it past your ‘source’ to throw a monkeywrench into the works if he thought it’d be funny--_  
  
And he’d responded all out of proportion, snapping back something that had sounded off-kilter even to his ears; Hattori’d traded the sharp look for vague surprise, made a dubious noise and had left it at that. But now, shifting uncomfortably as a draft fingered its cold way through the folds of his blanket, Shinichi remembered the hot little flicker of rage with something akin to alarm.  
  
Emotions were easy for him, had always been easy. He’d never believed in the stereotype of the cold, passionless detective whose clinical detachment would allow him to see into the hearts of the criminal element. It didn’t make sense when you looked at it logically; violent crimes in particular almost always had an emotional component—greed, revenge, love, hatred, despair, grief—and working in a vacuum was like trying to manipulate a hammer and nail without using your hands. So, in the school of Detecting As Done By Kudo Shinichi, you didn’t deny emotions; you fought your way through them, accepted them, understood them... or at least you tried, and then you could comprehend  _other_  people's emotions and motives a little more clearly. Control, now, that was different. You worked on fine-tuning your control without losing your capacity.  
  
Even so… rage. Why had he been so pissed off?  
  
 _Because,_  said the bits of Shinichi’s brain that were tired of poking at this particular subject and had had it with tact,  _you weren’t defending the thief’s credibility; you were defending the thief himself, defending your friend._  
  
He’d defended Heiji before, mostly to Ai (whose opinion of the Osakajin ranged from dry amusement to impatience.) There hadn’t been anything like that little lick of anger then. Thinking back, though, he  _had_  felt it before in relation to Kid... and Ai, for that matter; Ran had told him about Ai's comment on the morning after Kid helped with Shinichi's change. About how befriending Kid would make it easier to recognize his betrayal when it happened. That had-- bothered Shinichi, though he'd said nothing at the time.  
  
There'd been other things too, little moments of irritation mixed with warmth, exasperation or simply pure laughter, all of them oddly strong, oddly lasting. And... the tactile things too:  _warmth_  came to mind, the embrace, and tiny bits of dreams from his chemical-induced delirium more than a week past. Remembering this Shinichi curled up on himself a little tighter, snuggling deeper into his blanket and staring out across the rooftops of what had become his neighborhood. The obvious answer was simply that he was reacting emphatically to an exceptional mind, taking pleasure from the contact that he'd needed and craved so badly; the obvious answer was that he was fascinated by the thief. That term bothered him slightly, though; it seemed to border on obsession, and he was  _not_  obsessed. Intellectually, Kudo Shinichi's life had plenty of stimulation (if you didn't count all the mind-bogglingly boring hours of kiddie school), what with murders, cows and so forth; but contact? The challenge of going up against an equal who didn't force him to work in subterfuge had been the best parts of competing with Kid; knowing him as a person...  
  
...was...  
  
 _Extraordinary._  
  
And worth a little anger. Maybe 'fascinated' was the right term, after all.  
  
Off in the distance a clock chimed-- a thin, almost delicate sound, and Shinichi lifted his head to listen. Funny thing; he'd heard it all his life but still had no clue where it came from. Right now, though, it was announcing that three a.m. had descended upon the world, and unless he wanted to be missed he'd better be climbing down soon. As he shrugged himself out of the blanket, he sighed, rubbing his small hands together for warmth; too much thinking, too few results. And anyway, maybe he was worrying about things too much. So he'd over-reacted a little, so what? Stress did that, stress and new experiences, new thoughts.  
  
It was during his climb back down the ladder that  _another_  new thought occurred to him, one that linked emotion and tactile reactions together; one foot on the window-ledge, Shinichi froze several stories above the street to consider this possibility before finishing his climb down with a mind that was even more perplexed and troubled than before.  
  
*  
  
Kid sent the morning's first dove from school. Fully aware it was rash, dangerous, risky, and downright stupid, he nevertheless stood on the highest point of the high school's roof with one arm outstretched, scanning the sky for his girls. Soon enough, a trio of them came fluttering down to land on his arm. The first to land was Yukito, who held onto his wrist for solid footing while she rapped at his thumbnail, trying to convince him to uncover the tiny morsel of food he'd held out for her.  
  
"Spoiled princess," Kid chuckled, petting her neck and those of her companions for good measure. "Can you take my letter to Tantei-san?" Yukito disliked large message tubes, and wouldn't fly with them because of the weight. But the note Kid slipped into her tiny aluminum bracelet was brief, written on a suitably small slip of paper.  
  
"Fly safe," he murmured, hopping down from his perch as Yukito and her escort flapped up into the cold sky. He brushed dust and tiny feathers from his cuffs, straightening his uniform jacket fastidiously. As he turned around to approach the rooftop's stairwell door, it popped open in front of him, making him jump back a pace when he saw who it was.  
  
Akako eyed him critically. "If you hang around, I'll make you punch a timecard for your hours, Fool," she threatened him, a certain glee in her eyes. Kaito's witchy classmate had always given Kid the chills - not only because she clearly knew more about him than the rest of his class combined (excluding Hakuba on the increasingly rare occasions that he was in town), but also just because of her attitude and demeanor. The girl  _tried_  to make people discomfited, and to Kid's great displeasure, she often succeeded.  
  
Kaito stepped to the fore as Kid busied himself with a mental twiddling of thumbs. "Witch, mind your own silly business. I don't need to be in class right now anyway; I've already turned in the homework, and I needed fresh air on my new bruises anyway. Aoko was too cruel to me this morning!"  
  
"Crocodile tears," Akako scoffed, glaring at the magician without an ounce of sympathy. "Get back downstairs and play nice with your girlfriend. Sensei will be happy I found you so quickly....but of course, that's why it's  _me_  who's always picked to find you."  
  
"You or Aoko," Kaito grumbled, rolling his eyes. "I would be better off with Hakuba stalking me all over the building!"  
  
"Doesn't he do that already?" Akako asked, feigning politeness by holding one hand up to cover her amused titter.  
  
Kaito propped himself against the doorframe, utterly unimpressed with every inch of Akako's attitude. "You're blocking the door, Witch. If you want me back in the classroom so badly, move your oversized butt and let me down the stairs."  
  
"I'll make yours twice as big if you say that again, Magician," the witch warned, and Kaito quickly held up a hand in a little bow.  
  
"Okay, hai, won't say another word, thanks very much, wonderful talking with such a lovely flower of delicate femininity, etcetera, etcetera, see you in class." He scooted past her and leapt over the stairway railing, landing with light, firm footing on the treads of the stairs one full story down. From there he trotted ahead, putting as much distance between the witch and himself as he reasonably could.  
  
 _Nuisance,_  Kid and Kaito bitched as they fled.  _As if Hakuba, Aoko, and school itself weren't bad enough. That witch serves absolutely no purpose but to get in our way._  
  
As he skidded into the classroom, making perfunctory bows to the teacher as he skittered into his seat again, Kaito thought back to the letter Kid had sent to Shinichi.

> _What next? Your move, I'll follow --kk_

  
  
_"You sure about that?"_  he asked Kid quietly, flipping to the appropriate page in their textbook with the aid of a rather irritated Aoko.  _"It's not like you couldn't choose a path forward for yourself, based on what you know now."_  
  
 _Didn't say I would sit idly by, did I?_  Kid grinned, kicking his feet up in the privacy of Kaito's mind's eye.  _But this is his case, and he's the one to make the presentation. He wouldn't presume to tell me how to run my own heists, of course._  
  
Kaito chuckled, finally turning his attention to their coursework - it was literature period - as the teacher's tone levelled out into a monotonous lecturing drone.  _"Just let me know what I can do to help, too,"_  he reminded Kid, setting a gentle elbow to Kid's ribs to ensure he had the thief's attention.  
  
 _Hai, hai,_  Kid chuckled.  _But I'm not going to put you out of your way. I think I can do this in my normal planning time, and not take any more of your share of the hours._  
  
 _"Well, let me know anyway,"_  Kaito said.  _"The more I help you out on this, the more you owe me later."_  
  
Kid's laugh at that was sudden enough to startle their body into actually chuckling out loud, and the glares that Kaito received in response - and then passed on to his counterpart with interest - were enough to bludgeon Kid and his indefatigable snark into silence. Well, at least for the moment.  
  
*  
  
"--and we found Mitsuo-kun's dog in Numi-san's backyard just like we thought and Numi-san apologized and said he'd fix the hole under the fence and--" (gasp for breath) "--Mitsuo-kun said maybe they could take them to the park together and let them play and so we solved the case and--" (gasp, gasp) "--there weren't any dead bodies this time at all! AND that there'd probably be puppies!" Ayumi-kun finished, face pink with excitement, lack of oxygen and triumph; to either side of her Genta and Mitsuhiko looked proud. "Only you weren't there so you didn't get to help," she added a little sadly. "Where WERE you all weekend, Conan-kun?"  
  
School had just let out for the day; the quintet of first-graders which the teachers had taken to calling The Usual Suspects was crossing the playground. All around them their classmates thundered by, straggled, loitered or ran headlong, each and every one seemingly incapable of saying anything at less than maximum volume. Conan dodged one of the less careful of the thundering variety ("Watch it, Rumiko-kun--" "Sorrysorrygottago!") and tried to look contrite. "Just... around."  
  
Genta snorted, a sound that could have done an ox proud. He pointed an accusatory finger. "I KNOW where you were... Conan-kun was investigating that thing with the cows. All that beef, and nobody could eat it!" He contemplated this awful fact for a scant second before being elbowed sharply in the ribs by Mitsuhiko.  
  
"Geeeeeenta-kun, there were BODIES in the cows; I saw it on TV. Pieces of them, anyway. Who'd want to eat that? Eurgh!" All three children made horrified faces; trailing a little behind as usual, Ai raised an eyebrow and looked at Conan, who sighed and capitulated. He spent the next few minutes laying out the bare bones of the case for the Shonen Tantei, making it as uninteresting as possible... which, as a tactic, wasn't very effective. Cows and dead bodies and mysterious descents from the sky and exciting craters were kind of hard to dim down.  
  
Despite his best efforts, Mitsuhiko had begun enthusing about searching the area for a  _ninth_  cow (unlikely at this date; it would've almost certainly been reported, if nothing else due to the smell) when there was a sharp  _beeeeep!_  from outside the school gate; they all looked up... and there stood Hattori Heiji, or rather there satHeiji, astride an unfamiliar dark green motorbike of some sort, apparently a rental. "Yo, Kudo?"  
  
"Shinichi-niisan's  _not here,_ " Shinichi hollered at him. "Did you need him for something?"  
  
Heiji had the good manners to look contrite. "Ah, yeah, Conan, we oughta go phone him. He can probably help me with the  _case_  that we're working on."  
  
"Us too, us too!"  
  
Shinichi, who'd been expecting the shrieks, was even still caught off-guard. Heiji stuck one finger in his ear with a wince. "Sheesh, kids, that usedta be my eardrum."  
  
The shortest member of the Shonen Tantei turned his best contrite-but-practical look on the rest. "We can't all fit," he pointed out, snagging the child-sized helmet which the Osakajin had passed him; without looking at it, he slipped it on and accepted a hand up before noticing the wide-eyed grins that Mitsuhiko and Genta were unexpectedly sporting. Even Ayumi was giggling behind her hand-- "What?"  
  
The little girl pointed.  
  
Off came the helmet, and Shinichi groaned; pink with bright decals not unlike the 'guun-guun' stationary a certain thief had sent him, all capering animals and dancing meat-buns... "Hattori, couldn't you've picked something less-- less--" he stage-whispered from one corner of his mouth.  
  
The other detective snickered. "It was all they had, Kudo- _taaaaan,"_  he drawled, which was almost certainly a lie. With a feeling of doom ( _Please God don't let Ran or Kid or anybody at all I've ever known anywhere see me wearing this_  Shinichi slipped the evil thing back on and waved at the rest of the giggling Shonen Tantei as the engine revved.  
  
Haibara had the last word. "Cute," she murmured loudly enough to be heard over the noise; against Shinichi's arms, Hattori's ribs moved as he laughed( _bastard_ ) and they pulled away into traffic.  
  
Hattori steered them through Beika in the direction of the police station, dovetailing with Shinichi's expectations; being seen and seeing at the station would be educational. Hopefully, the balance of education would tilt in favor of Heiji and Shinichi, rather than against them...but information was power and Shinichi and Heiji both knew this particular case was going to require a lot of both.  
  
*  
  
There was no sousaphone in Missing Persons this time; instead there was a decapitated head.  
  
\--not the real thing, of course, but a fairly remarkable computer mock-up of one, rotating in all its lifeless glory on Chirokawa's screen. The pits where eyes had once been had, mercifully, been filled in with basic shapes to mimic the orbs that had been removed; and as for the face itself...  
  
"Skinned?" asked Shinichi, fighting back a wave of nausea. "Are you sure, Chirokawa-san?" He tucked his feet in beneath his chair, huddling instinctively in on himself protectively; leaning with his back against the door a few feet away, Heiji looked a little green.  
  
"Skinned, yes, presumably to hide the tattoos," the elderly man said shortly. "Not that it worked, of course; tattoos go deeper than mere epidermal levels. Forensics has been able to retrieve them from burned areas, limbs planed down by road friction, from long-dried remains... disgusting, messy business. But as you can see--" He tapped a command on his keyboard and the rate of rotation slowed; another command, and suddenly fleshtones filled out, angular planes smoothed into curves and bright, black eyes replaced the blocky shapes. ["There we go."](http://lh5.ggpht.com/_5KlMIH-1DpY/SxxsyixmDwI/AAAAAAAAD9k/H4jza2S4Dpc/amd_gang.jpg)  
  
Both Heiji and Shinichi were silent. Chirokawa's expectant stare did little to loosen their tongues. "Oh, for crying out loud--" the old man finally exclaimed, clicking out of the simulation. The graphical head returned to blocky anonymity, and Chirokawa levelled an irritated glare on Shinichi and Heiji both.  
  
" _Gang_  tattoos! Those are gang tattoos. Are you going to make me do all the work myself? Now I don't know where from or what for, but you two bright bulbs," he said, with a glance in Heiji's direction that said he was applying the label with generosity, "You two are the detectives. So  _you_  go figure it out. Go! Go!"  
  
"Y'can't just head us out the door an' expect us to memorize the damn thing," Heiji countered, remaining stationary in front of the door even as Chirokawa continued his insistent forward shuffle, gloved hands held before him in a sweeping gesture. A moment later, Heiji's belly intercepted the man's hands, and Chirokawa shuffled to a stop. Frowning, the technician looked up the considerable distance between his own height and Heiji's, meeting the Osakajin's unimpressed frown with an obstinate one of his own, and resorted to poking Heiji's belly impatiently with all his fingers.  
  
"You need to not be here. Wasn't I clear enough about that?"  
  
Heiji, more disturbed than distressed now, glanced over at Shinichi. "A little help here, Kudo?"  
  
"Chirokawa-san, Heiji-niisan's right, we can't memorize that man's tattoos just looking at him once. They're too complicated." He hopped down from his chair and crossed the small office to tug on Chirokawa's sleeve. "Also, Heiji hasn't washed that shirt today."  
  
The result was instantaneous: Chirokawa leaped back from Heiji, who seemed unsure that he appreciated Shinichi's version of 'help,' and ripped off his gloves. Into a red hasmat container they went, before Chirokawa fastidiously began to wash his hands in the office's small sink, using water that sent up steam and turned his pale skin red.  
  
Snapping on a set of new gloves, the man sent a withering glance at the Detective of the West. "I can see," he said icily, "that you don't know how to take a hint. Or attend to basic cleanliness, either." Heiji, who had opened his mouth indignantly, closed it with a snap as Shinichi made soothing noises.  _"Do_  shut up, Edogawa, you sound like someone's nanny." Skirting around them both with obvious distaste, Chirokawa typed in a couple of brief commands and a printer spat out a page of text and a full-color copy of the tattooed face. "There. --Well, pick it up, go ahead, I'm certainly not going to touch it."  
  
"Err... thank you?"  
  
"Out, out, OUT! Shoo! Go investigate!" Waving his gloved hands like a farmwife herding chickens, Chirokawa successfully gave the two the brush-off. "And change your shirt!"  
  
The door shut with a remarkably cranky click. In silence, the two detectives looked at each other and then at the photo. Shinichi was the first to speak. "Gang tattoos? Hattori, those aren't yakuza."  
  
"And he's not Japanese," pointed out the other. "But hey, gotta start somewhere, and it's a better lead than we had." He glanced around, simultaneously kicking off shoe-covers and gloves. "We need internet. Agasa's? Your old place, or Mouri's?"   
  
Shinichi quickly hid his wince. "Mouri's," he declared, "We can listen in on ojii-san while we work."  _And we won't run into Kid._  That was the better benefit to using the detective agency, but Shinichi wasn't about to tell Heiji that.  
  
The trip back to the Mouri agency was accomplished simply, though Shinichi did take the time to offer Heiji a second withering glance on account of the pink helmet. And his hopes for anonymity were somewhat derailed by a rose-pink dove, who paced them for the space of half a city block. Her ankles were empty, though, so Shinichi hoped Kid didn't have on-dove cameras and turned his attention back to the road. Hattori drove the borrowed cycle like it was his own. Arms and legs much too short to hold himself in place, Shinichi relied completely on his grip on Hattori to keep him on the bike. It was a little harder than normal, as Hattori hadn't brought along his body-hugging riding jacket, and his coat and layered shirts slid around more than they should. But one good thing about being a kid, Shinichi reflected wryly, was they had proportional hand strength almost equitable to an adult's.  
  
He regripped a double handful of Heiji's clothing, knuckles pulling the fabric taut across the other's stomach. That was one thing he missed, among many, many others, about his old body -- he'd been fit. Quite fit, actually, and had been pleased to overhear a girl he didn't know admiring his "cute soccer butt" on more than one occasion. He'd been a vain little prat back then, Shinichi reflected. Becoming Conan had cured him of that vanity quickly indeed. But still...  
  
 _God, I promise not to stare at myself in the mirror if I can get my body back,_  Shinichi tried, directing his thoughts in a near approximation of 'upward.'  _Not even on the first day I get it back. Well. Not much. And then can I have an exception for after I win any contests with Kid or Heiji? Physical ones, like running. Not thinking-based ones. Those I can just gloat in person about. But I won't even do that, God, if I can have my body back. For good this time, and maybe less painfully than last time?_ A moment of reflection.  
  
 _Um._ _Definitely_ _less painfully than last time._    
  
Promises to God or not, he arrived at the agency in the same shape he'd left it in. Neither Mouri nor Ran were home; belatedly Shinichi recalled something he'd caught that morning about errands and settled down to his laptop with a mental shrug. A few minutes later the tattooed man's photo had been scanned as a file, shared with Heiji, and they both settled down to some serious research.  
  
Facial tattoos were historically prevalent; Maori, Inuit, North American tribal... you found them everywhere. And gang-tattoos, well, those too; the symbolism varied from country to country, but the majority were done for the same reasons of ownership, identification and personal history. The small amount of data recorded by Forensics regarding chemical composition indicated that despite the elaborate nature of the tattoos, they'd probably been done using ordinary ballpoint-pen ink and at least partially without a mechanized gun, which sounded odd until you considered that tattooing had been done without motorized needles for thousands of years. The ink composition pointed once again towards a lower-level demographic (possibly even jail tattooing), and that sent both Shinichi and Heiji off on a search for meanings of the victim's symbols.  
  
"Kudo? Think I found somethin'." Heiji's accent was thicker than ever, the long vowels and clipped-off ending consonants of Osakabin more voluable than usual. "You ever hear of 'Mi Vida Loca'?"  
  
Shinichi blinked. Spanish was  _not_  his strong suit, but... "The --crazy life?" he hazarded.  
  
 _"'My_  crazy life,'" corrected the other detective with relish. He pointed to a triangular-shaped design just beneath and behind the left eye, dotted with three circles. "Found this one inna thing on gang symbolism in South America-- says it's talkin' about the El Salvador-Guatemala-Honduras drug connections, and you find it a lot on South American gang members, 'specially a gang called the Maras." He punched the air in triumph. "Lotta cows in South America, ne?"  
  
"A lot," Shinichi echoed, somewhat more subdued. Hattori's breakthrough was significant - so much so that Shinichi's mind was already leaping ahead to connect the implicated dots. If the victims were coming from Guatemala, that matched much of the supposition that he, Hattori, and Kid had each come up with. If there was gang involvement, however, that could potentially change the overall demographic of the victims...which could change the motive.  
  
But there were the children to be considered, Shinichi reminded himself, the children and the probable female hands. The victims had been taken from a full range of age groups - perhaps none extremely old -- and, now that he'd thought of it, that would be a useful tangent to follow up on; the average age of the victims as compared with the average age of their supposed country of origin could go a long way toward describing the group as a cross-section of a particular cross-section of a population, so to speak. It would at the very least help guide the search - or tell them that they were way off base.  
  
But that didn't answer the original question. Was this a different sort of murder than he'd assumed? One based on retribution?  
  
Something nagged at him, though, a little niggling voice... something from the sparse notes, some little detail that didn't fit in. It was always the anomalies that made the case: the scratches on the balcony, the broken pane of glass, the scuffmarks without a reason... and therefore Shinichi tended to pay little niggling voices their due attention. He followed this one's hint, scowling horribly at the screen for a second.  _C'mon, what was it, what-- oh. Huh._  "Heiji," he said slowly, "did you see the comment about the abraision marks on the victim's right cheek?" There was an odd blank patch there; in the photographic simulation it showed as plain, pinkish skin, but in the diagrammed layout it had vague traces of ink in no particular pattern overlayed with scarification. Forensics had briefly noted this as an abraded area, relatively recent but healed and with no subdermal damage to the bone beneath, which ruled out accidental abrasion from, say, road-rash. "Why would a gang-member have his tattoos removed?"  
  
Hattori frowned at the same images and text on his own screen, popping back and forth from the photographic mock-up to a disconcerting flattened spread that displayed the designs as one continuous flow; it looks peculiarly (and appropriately, in a sick kind of way) like a deathmask from some ancient culture. "'Cause he wasn't a gang-member anymore?" He swung the office-chair of Mouri's that he'd commandeered around, facing Shinichi's own cross-legged perch on the couch. "And if he wasn't a gang-member anymore--"  
  
"--then he had to have a good reason for quitting, they don't just let people go--"  
  
"--like jail? Family pressure? Young guy, tryin' to find a job? Maybe an arrest-record somewhere; they keep info on tattoos and scars--"  
  
"--we can find out from Interpol, but it'll require more help from Missing Persons."  
  
Full stop; gloomy silence.  
  
With an air of solemnity that would've done justice to the retainer of a samurai about to commit seppuku, Heiji handed the phone to Shinichi. "Nice knowin' you, Kudo."  
  
".....up yours, Hattori."  
  
"Oh yeah, REAL mature look for you, Kudo. You gonna teach your little kiddie friends how to give people the finger too? Go on, call the guy."  
  
The phone rang through to voice mail on the first try, after about eight rings. Shinichi, with a puzzled expression, hung up and tried again. This time it rattled loudly, the sound of a handset being knocked off its cradle, and then rattled again as Chirokawa hastily picked it up.  
  
"Moshi moshi, Chiroka---" Shinichi began.  
  
" _THIS IS NOT THE TIME,_ " came the old man's voice, very strained and frantic, at a loud enough volume that Hattori heard it, and pulled a face in surprise. Shinichi rubbed at his ear, switched the phone to the opposite one, and tried again.  
  
"Is something the---"  
  
Chirokawa cut him off again, and if the noises in the background were any indication, he was demonstratively accompanying his gestures with slams and punches. " _MATTER, YES, THE MATTER IS THE MATERIAL OF MY OFFICE. SOMEONE HAS BEEN IN MY OFFICE. SOMEONE HAS BEEN IN MY_ _ **OFFICE**_ _."_  
  
Shinichi cut a quick look to Hattori, wariness in his gaze. Hattori got up immediately and began collecting their coats. "We'll be there in a moment, Chirokawa-san," Shinichi reassured the man, receiving a burble of frustrated noise as response. "Don't leave your office. We'll be there as fast as we can."  
  
"This might be gettin' ugly," Hattori muttered, tossing Shinichi's coat to him as the smaller detective clicked the phone shut and pocketed it. Shinichi met this comment with a dry look.  
  
"Right, because  _bodies_  falling from the  _sky_  inside of  _cows_  is totally normal and not worth commentary."  
  
Heiji shrugged. "Dunno about you, but only the cows part is new to me."  
  
*  
  
Back to the station... and this time, as payback for all the gas and transport, Hattori announced flatly that he'd be waiting in the lobby while Shinichi had his little chat with Chirokawa. Due to the presence of the front desk officer (this time a rather pretty young rookie who seemed quite charmed by cute little Conan's serious demeanor), the Detective of the East was not able to express his opinion of the Osakajin's cowardice in the kind of language that would do it justice... but the look he threw Heiji over his shoulder as he reluctantly plodded down the hall spoke volumes.  
  
Forty minutes or so later he returned with a sheaf of papers in his hand and a troubled expression in his eyes. Hattori had fallen asleep, sprawled deeply in a lobby chair with his hat over his eyes and his hands clasped behind his head; Shinichi scooted up onto the nearest seat and began quietly studying his findings.  
  
"How's the clean freak doin'?"   
  
Apparently Heiji's sleep was merely... apparent. Shinichi turned a page, speaking quietly. "He's not a clean freak, he's a germaphobe. And when I left him, he was autoclaving his paperclips-- and no, I do  _not_  know where he got an autoclave. He also has plans to redo his office, by which I mean 'remove everything, sterilize it down to the grout in the tiles, and put it back together while wearing a clean-suit.' That's a quote." He glanced sideways, clearing his throat; Hattori hadn't moved at all. "It looks like someone managed to acquire a pass-key to his office and rearrange things a little; it's probable that Chirokawa's notes on the cow case were xeroxed, since they'd been moved. Nothing's missing, but..." He allowed the words to trail off, an unchildlike frown on his face. "Given that, I'd bet they got into his computer and copied the data there too. And that bothers me."  
  
"Yeah? Why? Specifically, I mean, aside from the whole 'breaking-and-entering-is-wrong' deal." Heiji pushed the hat back off his forehead with one angular brown hand.  
  
"Because all the activity up to this point's been at a distance; we haven't even spoken to any of the shipping company's staff. We haven't even seen the face of a suspect..." Shinichi's brows drew down, and he rubbed at his forehead with one hand. "Hell, we've only seen a computerized facsimile of one of the victims' faces at that. This case isn't like anything we usually work on; it's--"  
  
"--not personal." Hattori still hadn't moved, but there was a set to his jaw that told Shinich that he'd been thinking along the same lines. "We usually're either there on the scene when a crime happens or we come in right after; these poor schmucks could've died months ago, even longer, a long ways away. It's horrible, but it's not _here."_  
  
"Doesn't make it any less of a crime, Hattori."  
  
The other nodded, looking grim. "Got that right." He slouched back. "Hmmm...."  
  
Shinichi sighed as silence fell between them, glancing out the glass-fronted panes of the lobby to the street where night was beginning to fall; they had been hard at work since the end of Conan's school day and leaden weariness weighed down his very bones. "Not personal," he murmured, watching his fellow detective absentmindedly as Heiji stretched his interlaced hands over his head with a popping of joints. Tanned hands, long-fingered; Shinichi yawned and found himself staring at his own hands, flexing the thin, childish digits and thinking of others: stronger, deft, oddly calloused, nicked here and there with tiny white lines and the glassy redness of burn-scars.  
  
 _Wonder what he's doing right now?_  The dove-borne note that had arrived earlier had surprised him-- Kid and his alter-ego had to be back in school now, right? It was more than a little weird, picturing him-- them-- tamed down and wearing a school uniform, hemmed in by the rules and Thou Shants of the Japanese public school system. Shinichi felt another bone-cracking yawn forcing itself out; he slumped back on the couch, still staring at his hands for a moment before rubbing at his eyes tiredly.  
  
It had to be difficult, stifling down that manic, inventive personality into the mass-production mold of a high-school student; as hard or harder than shoving his own self into the simulacrum of a gradeschooler, really. Shinichi yawned again, eyes lidding closed; the couch was comfortable enough and he'd been running non-stop all day... did Kid have as hard a day behind him? Did he drive himself the same way as his investigative counterpart did? Probably, he--  
  
A finger snapped in front of his face. "Yo, Kudo?  
  
"Uh? What?" He opened his eyes with a start.  
  
"Y'were spacin' out there," Hattori said, eyes narrowing. "Y'okay? Need me t'get ya anything? Glass'a water? Coffee? Some--"  
  
" _Heiji,_ " Shinichi muttered, swatting away his friend's hand with an irritated tsk. "'M fine. Just tired." And he  _was_ \-- it had been a hard weekend, a long one, full of too much murder and not enough sleep, too much difficult thought and not enough time to simply enjoy the company of his friends, too much worry and not enough answers. Not nearly enough answers.  
  
"At least we know one thing," he realized, murmuring the words aloud even as he grew certain of them. "We're on the right track. There would have been no reason to bother Chirokawa-san if we had him chasing red herrings or wrong ideas." Shinichi looked up at Heiji slowly, determination battling back the onset of exhaustion in his own eyes, and in Heiji's as well. "We're getting somewhere."  
  
*  
  
However, they didn't get very far. Not ten meters from the front of the station, the two detectives found themselves under-- not  _attack,_  exactly, but certainly under fire.  
  
"--understand that you actually were called in from Osaka along with your father, the famous Hattori 'Oni' Heizo? Is that true, Hattori-san?"  
  
"--two rising young stars, collaborating on this very public case! What can you tell us about the--"  
  
"--no less than eight cows, all containing gruesomely mutilated body-parts. Edogawa-kun, you're well-known here in Beika City; won't you--"  
  
Hattori swore under his breath at the small group of reporters that had obviously been waiting outside; two cameras were busily filming away, and the microphones were being waved like so many cobras in their faces. He traded a dismayed look with Shinichi. "Eh, well, we're just..." Heiji glared at the most pushy of the reporters as the man nearly bopped the Osakajin in the face in his eagerness. "Back off, willya? Look, we're just... helpin' with the official inquiries, that's all. Why don't you try talking to the officials?"  
  
The reporters crowded closer; a few traded looks, muttering about 'close-mouthed officials' and 'the people have a right to know.' Shinichi rolled his eyes, sighed, and put on his best Conan Face. "We don't know all that much yet," he said brightly to the nearest mike. "And if we did, and we don't, we'd have to clear it with Megure-keibu anyway before we said it, right, Heiji-niisan?"  
  
Hattori ruffled his hair in a big-brotherly manner; Shinichi'd have to get him for that later. "Right, chibi. So sorry, guys, talk to the big shots; we're just little fish. You want info, you--"  
  
"--can talk to  _ **me**_ _."_  
  
At the barked words, the reporters jumped like a startled school of fish; the aforementioned 'famous Hattori 'Oni' Heizo' himself stood a little further down the steps beside Megure and several aides, a thundercloud darkening his face. To the reporters, however, he might have been pure gold; they moved towards him greedily, cameras rolling and mikes waving, leaving Shinichi and Heiji to breath a sigh of relief in their wake.  
  
"C'mon," Heiji muttered, sotto voce, crouching down to Shinichi's level. The clamor of reporters' voices tangled and swelled off to their left; then his father's voice roared out over them all, cowing them like dandelions in a strong wind. Then a moment of silence...and the clamor started up again, utterly unsatiable. "Let's get outta here before some punk drops out of the rest of the crowd to gnaw on us."  
  
"They're like those seagulls from that movie," Shinichi grumbled, following Heiji at a march toward the green rental bike. "The one with the clownfish? 'Mine! Mine! Mine!' Except these ones are saying, 'Talk! Talk! Talk!'"  
  
Heiji snickered and shoved Shinchi's helmet onto his head. "'Spill! Spill! Spill!' or maybe 'Scoop! Scoop!' Freaking vultures."  
  
"C'mon, vultures are better than  _that,_  Hattori. And did you have to call me 'Chibi' in front of them? Anything you say in front of a reporter sticks like glue, you know that--" Bickering amiably, the two headed out into the evening traffic, the bike's rumble fading slowly as it gained distance.   
  
It was a pity that they hadn't paid more attention to the crowd that had gathered to watch and listen as Oni Heizo and Megure dealt with the reporters and their questions; if they had, they might have noticed the man in a gray trenchcoat-- the one who paid little attention to the reporters, but who watched  _very_  closely as the green bike pulled away. Narrowed gray eyes matched thinning gray hair; the man was gray all over, suit and coat and identity. And the cellphone that he pulled out was silvery gray as well.  
  
 _Beepbeep._  A number flashed briefly on a screen as the phone speed-dialed; the gray man's eyes never blinked as they turned their attention towards the crowd again-- and towards Hattori Heizo in particular. "It's me. Yes, I'm at the police staton-- no, nothing to worry about, they haven't a shred of real proof. But we need a distraction; that Osaka bastard  _is_  involved." Gray eyes stared hard at the large officer. "...However, I think I might have a solution in mind. Tell me, is your, ah, 'handyman' busy much these days? I have a job for him."   
  
The last of the green bike's noise died away, merging into the murmur of traffic until there was nothing left to hear. 


	17. "Fountain, phonecall, wrong"

 

Heiji noticed their tail first. They weren't using his own pair of helmets, which'd had small bluetooth headsets built into them so that Kudo and he could communicate while on the road, so Heiji wasn't  _sure_  the other detective hadn't seen the purple and orange bike that had been somewhat less than inconspicuously trailing them for the last twelve blocks, but the boy's grip around Heiji's middle hadn't changed, so he had to guess Kudo was still thinking on the case, not watching the rearview mirrors. That also meant he couldn't ask Kudo for a suggestion on how, precisely, they should lose the bastard - or whether they should at all, and instead fake him out by leading him to a location to their advantage. The lack of the bluetooth headsets meant that Heiji also couldn't access his cell phone, so the call he normally would have made to his father or to Megure-keibu, to alert the officers of the problem, was out as well.

 _Well, shit,_  Heiji cursed to himself.  _Stupid technology._  As they pulled to a stoplight, coming to a rolling glide, the light changed again, letting them through with barely a moment's pause. The bike behind them, far enough back that it hadn't had to slow as Heiji had, gained a distance of three cars' lengths on the pair through the next block, and as Heiji approached the next intersection, he made his decision.

Kudo finally  _did_  tense up as Heiji switched on his left blinker, an obediently legal five hundred feet ahead of the intersection. Heiji dropped his elbows back, pinning the kid's arms to Heiji's sides, before the tension in his arms could translate into a gesture that would give their tail the drop. Instead, as they idled at this stoplight, Heiji brought his left hand forward to adjust the set of his helmet, yanking the chin down to make sure his vision was as clear as could be. As he brought his hand back to the handlebars, before bringing it into view of the bike behind them, he pointed at the rearview mirror, then patted Kudo's hands where they were clasped across his stomach.

 _Here's hoping you're hangin' on, chibi,_  Heiji said, sending a prayer heavenward, as the cross traffic slowed and came to a stop. The red lamp facing Heiji and Shinichi flickered off. The green lamp flickered on. Heiji revved the bike to full throttle and peeled out of the intersection, ignoring his own turn signal and the screeching horns of the lanes he was crossing as he zipped not left, but right, through the intersection and out of view down the cross street.

Far behind him, struggling to get across the second lane of traffic to turn right, the motorcyclist in orange and purple waved broadly, repeating an insistent pattern of gestures. A dark blue car directly across the intersection, American make by the size of it, turned left, following Heiji and Shinichi's path.

*

 _Shitshitshitshitshit._  Hanging on for dear life-- literally-- Shinichi felt his hair rise even as other portions of his anatomy left the bike's seat, gaining air as they skidded around a curve and took an offramp into a less-crowded street. He swallowed hard, leaning into the inner angle of the turn; memories of riding with his mother in New York rose queasily in his mind, and he gripped Heiji harder around the waist.

He stole a quick look over a shoulder; their brightly-colored pursuer had vanished, and the roadway was innocent of vehicles except for... oh. _Errgh._  He tapped at Heiji's arm quickly, turning the motion into a backwards thumbing. The helmet in front of him angled as the other detective looked into the rearview mirror, and he hunched his shoulders as he gunned the bike again.

The blue car's driver was skillful-- he took the next curve with a rising scream of tires as the two on the bike shot up an incline, accelerating hard. Trees and lamp-posts whipped by as they rounded a park; Hattori pointed, a flick of a gesture; his hand went out straight and flat, miming 'duck', and Shinichi gulped.

With an abrupt lurch, the green bike skidded onto one of the broad sidewalks leading into the park; they bumped up several steps, still climbing. Engine growling, the blue car followed from asphalt onto white cement, shooting into the park grounds with barely a pause. Shinichi clung like a leech, heart thudding in his ears and with his head ducked as low as possible; he had just barely enough notice from the lowering of Hattori's own helmet to shut his eyes and brace himself as they left the sidewalk and barreled into the bushes with a noisy crash.

Back on the sidewalk, the blue car scraped jarringly against branches as it sideswipped the shrubbery; it couldn't follow, but it snarled around the next turn and parallelled their path with amazing alacrity. Whoever he was, the driver was  _good._  And Hattori saw; heart in his throat, Shinichi yelped as they swerved through the thin undergrowth and juddered once more onto the sidewalk.

Behind them, sounding much raggeder than before, there was a growl of engine noise. Again.

"Hattori,  _move it,_ " Shinichi reflexively growled, glancing over his shoulder for a split second - long enough to spot the blunt muzzle of the car bearing down on them. The Osakan couldn't hear him, of course, but he  _did_  hear the engine roar, and with a quick glance to his mirrors, he cut the bike right, back into the bushes. This time he zoomed ahead, avoiding the worst lurches and lumps of park topography as best he could, until a small footpath presented itself and a quick decision was made.

Shinichi yelled in surprise - and some fear - as Hattori slammed on the brakes. He eased off them immediately to allow the wheels to spin as their momentum coasted them forward, and though the tail end of the bike popped off the ground, making Shinichi cling desperately to Hattori's back, they didn't flip. With one foot out to brace them - putting up smoke from the rubber tread as it dragged across the path's asphalt - Hattori executed a hairpin turn. Their pursuer, still on the sidewalk outside the shrubbery line, growled on past, until the squeal of Hattori's back wheel spinning and gripping the pavement drew the driver's attention. By that time, Hattori and Shinichi had put a thousand meters and counting of space between themselves and their pursuers, both of their heads ducked low, for speed or fear or both.

Which would've been just fine, if not for the ornamental pond. And the stairs.

No more than four meters across, it centered a shallow bowl of concrete and sunken flowerbeds three times as wide; adept as he was, Heiji had no more chance of missing it than he had of flying to the moon-- though he gave it a good try, breaking hard and throwing his weight to the side. A couple of park-goers scattered with shouts of alarm as the wheels hit the nearest of the wooden benches ringing the edges of the slope, knocking it aside like kindling; still miraculously upright (if at an angle that had  _imminent fail_  written all over it) the green bike screeched down the stairs in a broken, staccato series of thuds. Its two passengers could do nothing but hang on and wait for the inevitable.

Anyone who's ever been through an automotive accident knows all about how the seconds stretch and drag, about how the moments leading to impact seem to warp into an impossible blur of helplessness; and it's much  _much_  worse when you're small enough to be tossed like a child's toy: breakable, fragile, unable to do a goddamn thing but hang on and curl in upon yourself as tightly as possible. In the yawning gulf of time between the beginning of the sideways skid and its end, Shinichi felt his fingers dig into Hattori's shirt, felt the body in front of his flinch hard as the stretch of water rose up like a mouth to swallow them.

**_SPLOOSH!_ **

Darkness and  _coldcoldcold_  and impact and a horrendous confusion of noise--

"--Kudo? Kudo, you okay? Say somethin', dammit, oh fuck,  _Kudo--"_

* * *

"....mild concussion, bruises, and contusions to the ribs and right shoulder." The doctor glanced up at the roomful of people, mildly startled by the intensity of their focus... and their number. Two teenagers standing obvious guard to either side of the bed, four small children peering wide-eyed around a large, portly man with gray hair, a middle-aged man with a black mustache and an annoyed expression, and of course the patient: Edogawa Conan, male, age seven, blood type A, vehicular accident victim.

Or rather, according to the two officers waiting not-so-patiently out in the hall, one of two  _assault and attempted murder_  victims.

The second of the pair (the one who'd refused to stay overnight) crossed his arms and looked truculent. "How long're you gonna keep him?"

The doctor sighed. "Two days, possibly three; it all depends upon--"

"No."

Oh; that was the patient. The doctor blinked.  _Patients,_  especially adolescent males with mild concussions, bruises, et cetera. Didn't he have the sense to know that he was supposed to be frightened and compliant and a careful listener?

"I'm sorry, ah-" He checked his charts. "Hattori-san, what exactly is your objection to your friend receiving proper medical care?"

The patient, as expected, flustered somewhat at that. "That's not what I'm sayin', doc," he protested. "I'm sayin' you can't keep him that long."

The doctor raised one disbelieving eyebrow. "I  _can't_  keep him? And where is his primary guardian to say so?"

"Right here." The doctor turned his attention to the boy's second sentry, a young woman who looked older around the eyes than her school uniform said she was. "Tou-san and I have been caring for Conan-kun while his parents are away and we say you can't keep him that long."

"We, uh, we do?" That was apparently the girl's father, the one in the whole room who looked least intensely adamant about the whole process. It wasn't that he looked unconcerned at all...it was that everyone else was so  _intensely_  concerned.

One of those, the dark-eyed little girl hiding behind the old man, darted forward to the edge of the patient's bed. "Ran-san, they have to keep Conan-kun! He's hurt! Don't you remember last time, when he got shot and we had to get out of the cave and it was really really bad and scary?"

While the doctor checked his chart with no little amount of surprise - yes, there it was, a bullet wound to the stomach less than a year ago - the elder of the two dark-haired girls narrowed her eyes at the younger.

"Ayumi-chan, I promise, Conan will get all the rest and care and watching that he needs at home. But we're in the middle of a case right now, remember? Conan has to come home so we can work on it."

A hand on the little girl's shoulder turned her attention to the blond, quiet little girl beside her. "Conan-kun will be in very good hands," the girl promised, in tones drier than seemed possible from such a young person. "The Professor is an adept medical professional."

As the doctor followed the girls' gaze up to their guardian's face, the elderly professor demurred the blond child's praise uncomfortably, scratching the tip of his bulbous nose nervously. "Ah, ehh, I don't know about that, Ai-kun..."

"Yeah!!" chorused the two boys - one of them seeming to appear out of thin air, though the doctor supposed he had just been hiding behind the bulk of his friend. "Let the professor take care of Conan! Bring him hoooome!"

As the professor and Ran's father tried unsuccessfully to calm (or corral) the three more boisterous children - completely unaided by the calm blonde, who just stood watching with her arms crossed - the doctor turned his attention to his patient's self-appointed 'guards'... and found himself facing a brick wall of confident obstinance.

"Concussions in children his age are serious business," he said, trying one more time to talk some sense into the pair. "There are concerns of blood flow problems from swelling and broken vessels, and the dizziness that can accompany them is not to be taken lightly either..." Both looked supremely unimpressed.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, you two. I'm trying to tell you this for his own good."

Ran's firm expression softened just a little. "Doctor, we appreciate that, but as soon as Conan-kun has woken up and can stomach some movement and get some food in him, we'll be taking him home to rest and get sleep - just as he would here, but surrounded by his friends instead of in a hospital bed. I assure you that if anything happens to worry us, we'll bring him straight back."

"Yeah, so just sign the release paper already, ahkay?" The Osakajin boy was fairly radiating saucy cockiness at the doctor now that he was in sight of victory, and whatever faith the man had had in Ran's earnestness evaporated instantly. She, however, responded faster than the doctor himself could, slapping the rail of Conan's bed as she glared over the sleeping boy's head at his other guard.

" _HATTORI!_ "

The boy didn't look terribly contrite until Ran's glare narrowed even further, and her hands began to curl into fists. At that point, he offered a not entirely insincere short bow, hand upraised, to the doctor. "...Please." Meanwhile, the children's chatter, which had mostly quieted down, abruptly spiked into louder babble over some sort of minor disagreement, and in the bed, the small boy stirred blearily awake.

"Yare yare... keep it down," he mumbled, squinting his eyes against the light of the room and frowning as his body woke up and recognized its pains. Ran had already clasped one of his hands in both of hers, eyes watering, and the boy gripped her hand back as best he could while he looked around the room to take in all his visitors one by one.

* * *

 _Why... are_ _ _all these people__ _in here?_  was Shinichi's first muddled thought; he had some hazy notion that Mouri's bedroom wasn't nearly large enough for Ran, her father, Agasa, Hattori, Ai, Ayumi, Mitsuhiko, Genta and-- He blinked muzzily; who--? White lab coat, stethescope, clipboard, lanyard with a photo-ID tag, plastic gloves stuffed in one pocket, and one eyebrow hiked disapprovingly high; that equalled 'doctor'.  _Oh. Yeah. Owww... Not my room, HOSPITAL room. Bike, park, car-chase, we... hit something? Must've. Don't remember._  He turned his head, wincing as he followed the clasp on his hand up to Ran's worried face. "H-Hey. Didn't we.... ow.... do this already?" Shinichi asked, trying with very minimal success to smile.

She gave him one back that was twice as good as his own and then some, relief turning her eyes overbright. Across from her Heiji leaned over the bed, white teeth gleaming in his dark face; "'Bout time, Ku-- uh, Conan-kun. Now tell the nice man you're ready t'go home, okay? And we can get the hell out've here." He had a bandage on one cheekbone and another just below the edge of his hairline with the bloom of a bruise shadowing the edges.

"Urgh." The boy tried to focus-- and regretted it almost instantly as the throbbing in his head increased. "What'd I miss?"

"Nothing important," said Ran beside him, steel in her voice; her grip tightened for a second before loosening reluctantly. "And right now, what IS important is that you're cared for properly. Hattori-kun, could I have a little word with you outside? Immediately, please?"

In the hall, Ran gave an impressive stink-eye to the cop on the left of the door, who didn't move but did shutter down her expression, the widely understood sign of That's None Of My Business, Ma'am. Still scowling, but satisfied that they wouldn't get any better privacy, Ran tugged Hattori's collar till he bent down to her level, and offered her concerns in a manner Hattori assumed was  _supposed_  to be an unobtrusive hiss.

"What if he  _should_  stay here? We can't just cart him all over the place if he's got a head injury, so--"

"--We're not  _going_  to cart him all over'a place," Hattori cut her off, flapping one hand at her in a mollifying motion. "Anyway,  _shhhh,_  I can hear ya fine. We're gonna take 'im home an' stick him with Ai an' let her fix it. Him. She wouldn' be confused at the test results from him, anyway, like these guys would be. And it's probably safer home, too."

Ran frowned, leaning close to whisper near Hattori's ear. "Do you have any idea who tried to make you guys crash?"

"Tried?" Hattori snorted, and the policewoman's eyebrow hiked up slightly. He brought his tone back down to confidential with a growl. "They didn' just  _try_  t'crash us, they did a pretty decent job'v it, but they were probably thinking more of the 'under car wheels' and less'v the 'under water' variety of crash, so yeah, I'm gonna bet they'll do something else."

Ran's hands tightened into fists, one against the wall beside them. As a nurse bustled by, fortunately not noticing Ran's murderous expression, both teens held their tongues. As soon as she'd left, though, Ran thumped the wall - rather gently, for her.

"What were they trying to do? You guys haven't done anything wrong, there hasn't been anything unusual happening recently at all, unless--" Her eyes widened, and her breath grew short. "Oh, god, what if they found him out, what if they--"

Hattori grabbed Ran's shoulders, fingers sweeping short soothing arcs over their peaks. "You an' me an' Kudo an' Ai an' everyone'd be dead, Neechan," Hattori told her soberly. "Kudo's impressed that much on me, an' he's learned it from Ai an' from firsthand experience with 'em. I'm not rulin' anything out, but I don't think it's them, not yet at least. Maybe I'll change my mind later, but for now I think you're forgetting something." At Ran's hopeful, confused look, Hattori broke into a wide grin.

"'Nothing unusual happening,' y'said? Cows falling down on your doorstep don't count?" He laughed, again making the officers at the door twitch. "I think Kudo's gotten to your head, if that's normal where you come from."

Blinking, Ran began to giggle, then grinned widely, her sunny eventempered smile restored. "I didn't even think of that, Hattori! Things  _have_ been weird around here. ...Let's just get Sh--Conan home, and deal with the rest of this later."

* * *

It took some doing to keep the trip home from becoming something of a parade, what with the Shonen Tantei clamoring to come along and an Official Police Presence following behind in a squadcar just in case; as it was, Heiji and Mouri ended up in with the officer to allow the boy room enough to ride comfortably in the taxi. It also took a little doing to get Shinichi into Agasa's spare room and to make his three youngest guardians reluctantly leave; but at last, head throbbing abominably, the boy closed his eyes against the sparkles that were chasing themselves across his vision and let sleep pull him under again.

The clock on the nightstand was telling him  _7:23_  in green neon when Shinichi slowly opened his eyes again; disoriented and groggy, it took a few moments for him to remember just where he was and why he was there at all. There was a glass beside the clock, water beading up on its sides; fumbling a little with hands that felt unexpectedly heavy, he reached.

Another hand beat him to it. "Here," said Ai quietly, slipping a straw into the glass and holding it out. "How do you feel?" The girl was curled up in a chair beside the bed, socked feet tucked up beneath her; her characteristic lab-coat was missing for once, and as he drank the water in slow sips Shinichi couldn't help but notice that she seemed to be missing a little of her usual collected coolness-- her eyes were shadowed, darkened with something other than clinical interest just this once. "Can you sit up?"

"Errgh... yeah, think so." Balancing a head that felt three sizes bigger than the norm on his neck, Shinichi passed the glass back and struggled to push himself upright. "Where  _is_  everybody?" The recollection of bandages on a tanned face nagged at him. "Hattori? Is he okay?"

"He's fine," Ai murmured, her gaze following the glass as it passed between their hands and was set down. "He's out in the main room with Mouri-san and the Professor. The children went home. The detective is at his office. The doctor at the hospital is now having a bad day." Ai chuckled slightly, a dry humor. "The combined force of Mouri-san and Hattori-kun was, understandably, greater than he was prepared to stand against." Ai reached a hand out to Shinichi's forehead, and the cool skin on the back of her narrow, bony hand brushed his flushed skin for the briefest of moments. "You don't seem to be running a fever."

Shinichi blinked slowly at her, trying not to encourage the sparkles in the corners of his vision to make a comeback. "Aren't you going to use the thermometer to be sure?"

"In a bit," Ai murmured, curling back up on her chair, toes curled over the edge of the seat, knees tucked up to her chin. Resting her head on her knees, she looked at Shinichi sideways, that strange shadow of familiarity altering the normally cool, dispassionate gaze he was used to. "I don't feel like prodding you too harshly at the moment. Don't worry, that will change."

He eyed her with groggy trepidation. ".......don't force yourself on my account..." The boy slowly began taking stock of his physical state; in the hospital he'd been too distracted and fuzzy-headed to really pay attention to much other than the fact that he was alive and  _leaving,_ but now that he had a moment to think-- "All fingers and toes accounted for? Nothing broken? ....aaagh....." Shinichi wiggled his extremities, wincing at previously-unnoticed bruises. He could feel bandages around and below one knee, something that felt like a taped-on pad at his left elbow and-- "Stitches?" He pushed the sheets back to scowl blearily at an itchy, aching place just below his ribs. "They had to suture me? How many?"

"Only four. You caught something sharp on Hattori's bike, apparently." Ai raised an eyebrow, refilling Shinichi's glass from a small jug beside the clock. "He has a similar gash just below the same placement. Are you two trying for matching scars?"

He grimaced, accepting the glass again and taking a long drink without answering. "Thanks." Everything either stung or throbbed, from his abused head down to the soles of his feet; feeling just a little (or possibly a lot) like the world could go and manage without him for a while, Shinichi asked, "So... how long am I stuck here? I take it Heiji's worried about round two?"

"He is," Ai confirmed, her tone carefully neutral. "I don't disagree, either. Until we know what inspired this, we don't know what specific things we should avoid doing to stay off their radar until we get more information. That, unfortunately, loops us into a bit of a cycle."

She paused. "Aside from a many other possibilities, most of which I doubt I have to enumerate to you, is the chance that...in the parlance of cliche...we have a leak."

"A...." Shinichi rubbed at his eyes with the back of one scraped hand. "...leak? Wait, by 'we' do you mean the police?" Horrible possibilities rose up in his mind and he shook his head (regretting the motion almost immediately.) "If by that you mean the Organization... Ai, I doubt it. They're more the sort to use fire or another disaster scenario to do their cleanup, aren't they? And actually," he added soberly, "I'm not all that certain that the attempt on our lives had anything to do with me at all." He cradled his throbbing head in both hands for a second.

One eyebrow went up. Very slowly. "The probabilities of that, Ku--"

"Are higher than you think," Shinichi shot back, sitting up-- or trying to, and ending up falling back to the pillow with Ai's hands for guidance. "I'm saying that I think it has to do with our case," he explained through gritted teeth, and was gratified to see a sliver of honest willingness to listen opening up behind Ai's gaze. "Our source got his office messed with. I don't think they want anybody paying them as close attention as we are."

He winced at the sound of his own voice, which had risen enough to jar in his ears. "And anyway," Shinichi added with his own dose of dry humor as he closed his eyes, "there's an easy way to see if they're after Heiji, me OR Heiji, or just me." At her inquiring sound, he shrugged, eyes still shut. "Ow. --We just wait and see if they go after him a second time. My being involved in the first attempt might've just been due to opportunity, not design."

"Rather cold'v ya," Hattori chuckled, drawing both small adults' attention to the doorway, where he stood with one hip cocked against the frame. "Don't mean t'interrupt, but you got a call, Kudo, an' Ran won't tell me who it is."

Shinichi glanced to Ai, then Hattori, then past Hattori, out the doorway, to the room where Ran was probably sitting with one thumb over the microphone of his cell phone. "Send her in. Ai, could we?"

"Don't take too long," Ai remarked, sliding down from her chair and padding out of the room without a glance back. "You still owe me a core temperature reading."

Hattori winced as the diminuitive - but commanding - little girl walked past, then turned a look of amused sympathy on Shinichi. "You bettern' me," he laughed. Shinichi glared. "A'right, alright. I'll get her."

* * *

"Shinichi!  _Shinichi,_  oh take it, take it!" Ran all but threw the phone into his hands, careful not to flip it shut but very eager to get it out of her hands. The screen, once he woke it up, simply read "Restricted Number," and the fierce stab of satisfied vindication that Shinichi felt at seeing that almost obscured the first words he heard from the caller once the phone was up to his ear.

" _There you are. Tell Ran I didn't mean to upset her, mm?_ "

Shinichi held the phone a small distance away from his cheek, but didn't cover the microphone, as he turned an inquisitive look on Ran. "He says he didn't mean to upset you?"

Ran, who had calmed down somewhat now that the phone was out of her hands, sat down on the end of Shinichi's bed - then thought better of it, got up and closed the door, and sat back down again. "I used the bow tie when I answered, I pretended to be you and the first thing he said to me was, 'Mouri-san, good to hear from you again, could you please put Shinichi on the phone,' and I didn't recognize his voice at all, and I thought it had to be him, but what if it  _wasn't,_  but he wouldn't say and," she lowered her voice to a hiss, expression flickering between distress and outright irritation, "I couldn't  _ask_  him, I was sitting right next to Heiji, so I had to sit there and play dumb and the whole time he's nattering at me about - I don't even know, about - about -!!" She flushed bright red.

Shinichi turned his attention back to the phone with an unamused expression which Kid couldn't see, but could surely hear in his voice. "Kid? If you  _happened_  to be discussing brand names, sizing, fabric choice, lace selection, preference in padding, pros and cons of closure types, the usefulness of ribbon accents, or--" He glanced at Ran's reddening face, and continued with a growl-- " _any other related topic_  with my girlfriend, you do know that you will either have to send a dozen roses in my name to Ran's house posthaste, or suffer a  _very_  uncomfortable soccer ball the next time I see you, correct?"

There was a long moment of silence on the other end of the line. "Congratulations, Tantei. I never thought you'd say it."

Shinichi very nearly stared at the phone in puzzlement. "Say what?"

"Girl~friend~o~," Kid sang. "Congratulations and many happy returns!"

From the end of the bed, Ran's expression went from embarrassed to plain puzzled as Shinichi's complexion went from ruddy to positively ruby. "That-- I didn't--  _You._ "

"In other news, Tantei," Kid continued briskly, his tone as businesslike as a Monday morning, "You really need to stop nearly dying on my watch. I'm getting rather  _tired_  of watching you from the sidelines."

"Didn't mean to," muttered Shinichi with an upsurge of rebellious twelve-year-oldness surfacing briefly. "Believe me, it wasn't my idea of how to spend an afternoon." Frustration warred with his moment of embarrassment before winning-- and then promptly dying away. "Wait, you were watching? No, don't tell me." He wondered briefly if Kid had been the one to call the ambulance; someone had, after all. Past the increasingly-heavy ache in his head and the rest of his body he was aware of an odd sensation: an easing, a sense of some tense regard relaxing just a very little. It was an undeniably weird but reassuring bit of knowledge, that the thief had been somewhere around. "Um... thank you. For watching, I mean." Shinichi sighed. "And you don't have to worry for a little while, anyway; not going anywhere 'til my keepers unlock my ball and chain." Beside the bed Ran gave what was very nearly a snort, crossing her arms.

"I actually spotted it from above, and followed you out of civic duty before I realized it was you. Tell that Osakan ahou that if he drives like that again with you on board, I  _will_  pluck you right off his bike."

"Seeing as he doesn't LIKE YOU," Shinichi gritted, at as low a volume as he could reasonably believe would transmit, "That'll be rather difficult!"

The pained sounds on the other end of the line indicated that surely he was wrong,  _everybody_  loved Japan's most well-known Phantom Thief, didn't they? Of course they did. "Anyway, I'm stuck in bed for a while. --No, nothing too bad, just some contusions and the aftermath of a mild concussion. Right now I'm more worried that somebody'll take a pot-shot at Hattori at first opportunity, really; somebody's got their ass in a sling over this. We'd just found out they'd rifled Missing Persons before our little surprise bike-chase... The thing is, I'm not too sure where to take the investigation after th-- Hang on a sec, could you?" Ran was making urgent little gestures at that; Shinichi took a moment to confer with her before returning to the call.

"Okay," he said with a sigh, wishing the pounding in his head would settle down, "According to Ran, Hattori's planning on heading out to the shipping company's main offices tomorrow morning; they're out by . Just in case you, uh... happen to have any civic-duty-type urges towards surveillance in that area. Just be careful if you do, okay? Please." Shinichi hesitated and then added wryly, "Though I have to tell you, Hattori'd have fits at the very idea. You make him more than a little twitchy; it's kind of funny." He shifted in the bed, trying for a more comfortable position and groaning involuntarily as the sparkles tried to make a reappearance; Ran reached out, smoothing a cool hand across his forehead. "Sorry. Head hurts. Good thing I've got a thick skull, ne?"

On the other end of the phone line, Kaitou Kid held his head in his hands, phone pinned between one palm and his cheek. "I shouldn't be surprised, really; this must be karma paying me back." He knew he had no room to complain about dangerous stunts - after all, Shinichi had been the one watching during the fire when Kid had crashed, when this whole thing between them, this friendship, had been begun. And yet at the same time - Kid was a professional. He lived for his job, quite literally. And he was grown, his body lithe, strong, and trained to take all manner of abuse. He wore body armor when appropriate, he knew how to take a fall, how to perform first aid and triage on himself, how to use mental focus to block away pain until he had time or privacy to deal with it. He wasn't a small, fragile child with too-delicate bones, too-thin limbs, a too-weak body.

Kid knew that he wasn't inherently breakable, and he treated himself appropriate to that knowledge: pushing his own limits, physically and mentally, knowing that those limits would hold. But the more he looked at Shinichi, the more Kid was able to internalize how very breakable his friend was. The problem was, the guy hadn't realized it yet - after over a year of living in a child's body, Shinichi still charged headlong into all  _sorts_  of moronically dangerous situations with nothing more to protect him than his own bullheaded ballsiness. No body armor, no backup, sometimes not even a  _helmet_  - and through it all, handicapped by the physical limitations of a child. A very, very, very brilliant mind rested within that body, a mind that Kid couldn't get out of his  _own_  thoughts, but the brilliance of it sometimes only seemed to increase the size of its blind spots, too. And those were becoming increasingly dangerous, potentially fatal, as Shinichi ---

"Oh,  _spare_  me the drama!"

Kid looked up. In front of him, an illusion of Kuroba Kaito stood with arms crossed, a scowl darkening his features. "You drama whore!" Kid blinked, sat up straight, and pointed one finger towards his own chest in blank confusion. "Yes, you, you big white prat," Kaito snapped. "For crying out loud, stop  _looking_  for reasons to be depressed! He's perfectly capable of taking care of himself just as ruthlessly as you 'take care' of yourself. You're a hypocrite if you think that what you consider 'taking care of yourself' passes for the same kind of care and deliberation that you are sitting there yearning to give him."

Kid opened his mouth to protest, and Kaito just pushed on through, slicing the air with one flat palm to cut off his partner. "Save it. You're anything but careful of yourself, you never look before you leap and I mean that literally, you have  _no_  right to talk about what risks another _professional_  should or shouldn't be taking."

Kid bristled, puffing up. "He's a KI--"

"You're the only kid here," Kaito answered drily. "He is under cover, if you will, but he's anything but an average child and you  _know_  that, hell you don't even see him as he appears anymore, just as you know him to  _really_  be, eighteen years old and smarter than anything."

The thief gave him a petulant look. "Except me."

"Shut your ego, it's making noise." Kaito rolled his eyes, rubbing one hand the wrong way through his hair, and levelled a very no-nonsense glare on his counterpart. "Whether you or he is the smarter one is debatable - well, is up for question, though I doubt anyone could actually successfully conduct a debate on the topic. My point is, stop underestimating him when it's convenient for you, snap out of your damn depressive funk, and get back to your phone conversation."

Kid looked down at the phone in his hands, hardly seeing it; when he looked up again, Kaito's image was gone, but his voice remained to leave one final remark that ran down Kid's spine like an ice-cold finger.

_"He's not going to die just because you care about him, Kid."_

"--Kid? Kid? Oh for-- can you hear me?"

Blinking, Kid shook his head to clear it and focused on the phone again. "My apologies, Tantei-san." No, still not good enough; Kid coughed and cleared his throat, and when he tried again, his voice had a great deal less brittle stiltedness to it. "You were mentioning Missing Persons? Did you get copies of the data that was taken?"

There was a sigh of relief on the other end of the line. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd given yourself a concussion in sympathy or something." The boy's words were tinged with sarcasm, but the relief was quite real. "And-- wait, isn't getting copies of what isn't there kind of Zen? Never mind, so far as we could tell nothing had been taken; I've got copies of everything available." Despite his increasingly-pounding head Shinichi managed to outline his and Heiji's suppositions regarding gangmember tattoos and South American labor-camps; by the time he finished, his voice was dragging with weariness and the aches and pains were becoming strong enough that they were leaking out into the tenor of the detective's altered voice. "--and if they  _are_  after me in particular, they'll wait 'til I'm up and available. If it'd Heiji then I'd expect another attempt in the next few days."

The line dropped to silence for a moment; when he spoke again, Shinichi's words were lighter, a little easier. "Must be losing my touch; I almost just said that I wished I was investigating one of your heists instead of organ banks, frozen cows and airbourne corpses." He chuckled; "The good old days, right? At least they don't have a body-count involved."

"Never," Kid murmured, his throat tight for no reason he could discern. "Tantei, I'm going to have to go. I'll be around, and so will Moona and the others. Hopefully, my involvement in this whole affair is still mostly unknown, and if that remains true, the girls will be our best way of communicating with each other. If Hattori has any inherent fear of birds, tell him he'd do well to lose it."

A slightly wan snicker on the other end of the line indicated that this was fairly unlikely. "I think his only major fears have to do with running out of things to eat-- he's a bottomless pit-- and a certain girl from Osaka's left hook." He sighed.  _"God,_  my head hurts. Be careful, Kid; I'll try to stay out of the hospital if you will." There was a brief hesitation; then: "And..... if I can, when my head's not trying to explode, I'll do my best to get over to the library, okay? Jaa."  _click._

Kid closed his cell phone carefully, then let it drop to the carpet beside his chair. Ensconced in the Kuroba mansion library and den, with its big brass-tacked leather armchairs and a mustiness that grew from disuse over the last eight years, Kid tucked his feet up onto the seat, laid his cheek on his knees, and without retreating behind the comfortable shields of internal snark, self-deprecation, dismissal, witty banter, or even commentary, he simply, silently, and completely without an audience, cried.

* * *

"How's he doin?" As Ran quietly closed the door behind her Hattori Heiji looked up from flipping through the channels on the Professor's widescreen TV, green eyes concerned. He scratched at the bandage on his cheekbone; already one corner was peeling up, Hattori being of the sort of individual who couldn't help picking at things. "He finally drop off?"

"If he hasn't yet, he will soon," said Ai a little grimly. "Sleep is necessary for a concussed brain to heal, once the initial danger-period has passed. If he won't sleep naturally, what I gave him upon our arrival should take effect quite shortly." Her gaze met Ran's as the young woman sank down onto the couch with a sigh. "He was running a mild fever then; how  _is_  he, Mouri-san?"

"Tired. Cranky. Worried about something, and... too jittery to really rest." Ran rubbed at her eyes, her own weariness showing in the gesture. "Ai-chan? Oh-- I mean, Haibara-san--?"

The diminutive blonde gave the girl a wry smile, rising to her feet and moving towards the lab area. "'Ai-chan' is fine. You've been calling me that for quite some time now, after all. What?"

Ran bit her lip, hesitating as she glanced a little guiltily at Heiji. "That time when Shinichi, when he-- changed back-- I was just wondering if you'd gotten any further with the process. I don't mean anything you'd use right now, obviously," she said hastily, "but when that doctor in the hospital was reading Shinichi's test results, he seemed to think there were a few, um... oddities?" Ran's hands clasped together nervously. "Some of the blood-tests, bone density results, something about his white-cell count..." Her voice trailed off as she gave the scientist a questioning look. Beside her, Heiji's gaze switched back and forth between the two like someone watching a tennis match, bandaged brow furrowing.

"I'm surprised that's all he found," Ai remarked drily, raising an eyebrow as she fiddled with vials and several sheets of grid paper marked with handwritten data tables and line graphs. "Very little about your friend is normal anymore, and it's not unusual to suggest that it goes so far as his immune system. When we returned Shinichi to his proper size most recently, the process was much more deliberate - and controlled - than previous attempts, and I gained some  _very_  useful information about exactly how his body interprets and interacts with the Apotoxin. My current theory involves a large amount of organic chemistry which I wouldn't expect you to understand in its formulaic terms, but a rough summary might describe the process of the last experiment as a forced, abrupt period of progressive aging.

"The fact that he reverted early, despite the dose strength of Apotoxin which he was given, tells me that he's either developing a resistance to it, which is entirely feasible, or that his body rejected the drug and its effects as a sort of 'system imbalance.' Most people call that 'getting ill.'"

Ran stared. "His body...thinks he's sick?"

"Not right now, no," Ai answered, looking over her shoulder at Ran before turning back to her table. "When he's the size you prefer him in, _that_  is when his body - according to my theory - believes itself to be severely ill. Changes in bone density and white blood cell count would corroborate that theory."

After several long moments of complete silence ticked by, Ai looked over her shoulder again just in time to see Ran collapse onto the couch behind her, her expression one of abject horror.

"...Mouri-san?" Ai was not particularly good at being comforting, but she gave it a shot. "Mouri-san, bear in mind that the original purpose of the Apotoxin was to  _kill;_  Kudo-kun is actually very fortunate. He's quite alive, relatively healthy and-- if he can keep out of the way of would-be assassins--" (and she gave Heiji a Look, which he returned with a raised eyebrow as defiant punctuation) "--he should recover from his latest mishap with no detrimental effects. As for aging and de-aging, well." The child-sized scientist sighed. "This is all uncharted country, you do realize that, correct? The best results come from pooled data, and unfortunately our pool has only two cases and no control-group. The best we can do is keep Kudo-kun as healthy as possible and," she hesitated, "watch for anomalous signs."

"Like?" asked Hattori, sitting forward with the TV remote dangling forgotten from one hand.

"A healthy body does not run fever; a sick one does." She crossed her arms, wearing her best I-Really-Am-Among-Savages,-Aren't-I? face and regarding him severely. "His child's shape is becoming baseline for 'well'; so what do you think 'sick' infers?"

The Osakajin blinked. "Kudo as an adult. Well, THAT sucks." Beside him, Ran shuddered. "So, he starts gainin' a few inches here and there, hits puberty again, voice starts cracking-- what d'we do?"

Ai made a sour face, like she'd bitten a very large lemon. "Though I have no grounds for this supposition, I somehow doubt that a 'few inches' will be the extent of his - or our - problems. He reverted  _very_  quickly, despite my best preparations to the contrary. Mouri-san, would you say an hour would be a fair guess for the duration of the change?"

Ran shook her head. "I was so upset, I don't know...every minute felt like an instant, and every second was an hour. He was just --" She looked up, the memories that haunted her eyes making them look hollow and lost. "I could  _feel_  him shriv--shri--" She swallowed. "Shrinking. As I carried him across the lawn, I had to move my arms together so he didn't fall out between them."

Ai nodded grimly, turning a chair so she could sit sideways on it, facing both teens. "I have no reason to believe that, if he falls 'ill' and reverts again, the method will be any different."

There was an uncomfortable silence for a few moments, broken only by the distant sound of the Professor's car pulling around behind his house; he'd gone out to pick up dinner, as no-one currently felt remotely like cooking. "What about... length? Time, y'know, duration?" Heiji's brows were drawn completely together now, and once more he picked irritably at the bandage on his face. "Kudo said this last run lasted less'n a day; are we talkin' the same kind of thing're what?"

The unchildlike child in the labcoat crossed her arms, frowning. "I have no idea. An hour, several, a day more or less-- he's complained several times lately of headaches and the usual pains that have accompanied past transformations; I would have expected them to have receded by now, but... well." Ai looked at her two companions. "I'd suggest," she said dryly, "that you each might consider keeping a change of clothing at hand which'd fit Kudo-kun's larger form, should our speculations bear fruit. I'm certain he'd appreciate it."

Heiji blinked. "Uh. Right."

"I should carry a big purse," Ran said, both her gaze and her voice lacking focus. "It would have room..." Without explanation, she stood and crossed the room, disappearing quietly behind the closed door of Shinichi's sickroom. The latch clicked shut quietly behind her, muting the conversation in the main room. Noise meant Agasa had made it inside with the food, but Ran couldn't think of something less appealing to her at the moment. Shinichi slept in his bed, small as "normal", and the peace she should have felt to see him quiescent and restful was nowhere nearby. To Ai, the discussion had probably been helpful, constructive even. Helped her plan, maybe. For Ran, all it did was make her feel ill.

She knew how much the change had hurt him. She'd SEEN it, felt his muscle mass literally  _melt away_ , leaving oily smoke and loose skin in its wake.

Her heart shouldn't have leaped like it had. It shouldn't be pounding now.

Ran lowered herself onto the edge of Shinichi's bed, reaching gently to stroke back his thick bangs. Her hand lingered on his skin. "Shinichi," she murmured, trying to keep her voice strong, successfully keeping the tears back. "I'm sorry. It's not that I want you to hurt. I just miss you so much... and so much  _more_ , now. I thought seeing you that once would help. But now it's hard not to need more..."

It was strange; the hand that smoothed back the soft hair felt Conan's, but what it was stroking was Shinichi's. And even though he was only there in a mental and potentially-physically capacity ( _'only'--_  what an inadequate word!) Ran could almost see him, almost touch him, as if the small shape before her was a mirror, a crystal ball, an illusion.

 _As if._  Two more words that deserved the term 'inadequate'. But so much did: appearances, assumptions, smoke and mirrors...

Smoke and mirrors. Unbidden, Ran's thoughts turned to the one who'd called on the phone earlier. Watching Shinichi speak to the thief had been oddly unsettling-- he'd lit up like a Christmas tree despite his obvious aches, shown an animation and vivid spark that not even Heiji'd been able to call forth (though almost; sometimes the two detectives squabbled like brothers.) More and more she wondered what it was like, the peculiar bond between kaitou and tantei, and more and more she wondered what it felt like from within.

Because from the outside, it was looking stranger and stranger, and yet it seemed to be getting stronger all the time.

Her hand moved on its own, threading the fine strands through her fingers; they felt like silk. Beneath Ran's touch Shinichi stirred briefly, and she held her breath; but he only turned his flushed face towards her a little, breath a faint, warm tide against her palm.

If-- and she'd wondered about this at first-- if the link between them was based on gratitude and repayment for Kid's rescue and anonymity following the fire some months earlier, the debt had long since been paid. If it was based simply on mutual one-upmanship (and they  _were_ both male, so that had been a possibility) it should've worn itself out into aggression long since; Ran'd seen that kind of relationship at school. And if it'd been just the fascination of the unusual and of intellect versus matching intellect-- maybe she was wrong, but somehow... somehow Ran was certain in her very bones that their conversations wouldn't have in them the pure level of trust and comfortableness she'd witnessed in the aftermath of her and Shinichi's date.

"I don't understand," she whispered, the words barely above a breath of sound.  _But I guess it doesn't matter, does it? He called to see how you were; he... cares about you too, even if I don't really understand how. Good. Because me and Hattori-kun and Ai-chan and the Professor, we're not enough._

_You need us all. You need him too, somehow. I wonder if you realize that, Shinichi?_

There was the softest tap on the door; as she looked up, startled, Agasa's head poked around the doorjamb. "Ran-chan? I have dinner; you should eat before you collapse." The portly man looked past her towards Shinichi's peacefully sleeping form; he moved into the room, laying the back of one hand against the boy's forehead and tsking softly to himself. "Fever, just as Ai thought. Let him rest, Ran-chan; fretting won't help either of you, and he'll feel better tomorrow knowing that you didn't wear yourself out over him. Hmm?" Agasa cocked a bushy grey eyebrow her way and she smiled a little unwillingly, sliding off the bed and standing up. "Come, now, have a bite to eat before Hattori-kun gobbles the lot," he coaxed her.

"I-- alright." It was only good sense, really; it wasn't anything like abandonment. Shinichi'd be the first one to say so himself.

Before she closed the door between them, however, Ran stole one more wistful glance back at the sleeping figure; and if, for just a moment, his flushed face seemed to be that of the young man she'd lost a year ago and found again so recently, that wasn't so strange.

Was it?

* * *

_There was something wrong._

Drowsing half-drugged with painkillers in Agasa's guest bedroom, Shinichi knew it with the logic of sleep. Stumbling through bad dreams of crashing motorcycles and cars driven by skinless, eyeless dead men, he knew it. The knowledge chased him like guilt, hung onto his shirt-tail like a whiny child who won't shut up no matter how much you ignore it; and as he tossed restlessly in the wrinkled sheets, it wouldn't allow him to really rest until he turned around and  _faced_  it.

He'd managed well enough. The concussion had left him drained and listless, and whatever medication Ai had ordered him to ingest upon their arrival at Agasa's (using her most deadpan  _I'm-not-listening-to-you,-Kudo_  tone) had eventually sent him far off the map of reason and into some uncharted place where Shinichi's body might heal but his mind did not have that option. It wasn't her fault; considering the bizarre state of his current metabolism, it was amazing enough that he had any normal reactions at all.

Not that he was aware of this... no; Kudo Shinichi's consciousness, groggy and staggering back and forth between bruised wakefulness and not-quite-full-sleep, was fixed on the idea of _something wrong,_  something wrong with--

\--someone. Someone close, someone he'd--

The thought danced just out of reach; and the boy curled up tightly on himself, fingers fisted in the sheets. Eyes closed, Shinichi's lips moved silently before he shuddered back into a limp, sweat-soaked curl of pajamas and covers.

 _Low-grade fever,_  Haibara'd murmured to Agasa quietly some hours earlier as they'd settled him into bed.  _Not surprising; it may rise somewhat and he'll have a restless night but he won't remember it tomorrow. I wouldn't be too concerned._

...but there was something  _wrong._

Ran had gone home at last, escorted by a limping Heiji; his father had called in a telephonic storm of wrath and thunder, demanding that his offspring leave for Osaka immediately, and his son had refused flatly on the grounds that a) traveling targets are easy targets, b) since when did Hattori Senior think that he and his wife'd raised a coward? and c) involved parties were not supposed to leave the city of incident, and finally d) There Were Things He Had To Take Care Of, Dammit Otousan, and if you'd paid more attention you might  _know_  about that, Ne?

A compromise had eventually been reached, resulting in phone calls to Heiji's school, faxed paperwork and a planned lunchtime meeting the following day. The phonecall had then degenerated into bad temper and arguing and Ran had stepped in, requesting to speak with Hattori Senior. Much to his son's amusement, the respected and intimidating 'Oni' Heizo had then been forced into social politeness by the young woman on the other end of the line ("Of  _course_  we don't mind if he continues to stay with us, Hattori-san; my Tousan's been explaining allsorts of detective tips and tricks. He'll be fine. No, we wouldn't dream of you putting him up in your hotel. Thank you so much, we'll keep an eye on him for you. Goodnight.")

Ran had vehemently protested leaving Shinichi for the evening, but it had been pointed out that if  _her_  father had been left to his own devices much longer, he'd either burn down the building via microwave dinner or drink himself into a sulky stupor, so both teens had departed reluctantly for the Mouri agency, leaving their littler peer in the hands of Agasa and Haibara.

Now, it was quiet; the rest of the world had long since gone to sleep, and as Shinichi's eyes flickered, fluttered and slowly opened, the sound of his own bedclothes rustling was loud in his ears. Anyone who had known him would have found his expression disquietingly blank, inward-turned and unfocused... or focused so intently on something within the backdrop of his mind that there was nothing left to spare. In his plaid flannel pajamas the not-really-a-child looked, for once, entirely like a child.

One hand still clung to the soft throw that Ran had placed over the heavier blankets; he'd clutched it in his sleep, and now, as unsteady feet slipped onto the hardwood floor and unsteady footsteps made their way from the room and down a small hallway, the throw dragged behind in a simulacrum of a toddler's security blanket. It was dropped as small hands groped for a concealed button in the wall, stepped over and forgotten as a door slid open. As the dark tunnel between the Professor's home and the Kudo residence swallowed Shinichi up, his uneven footsteps died away into silence.

_...wrong. Need to make it right. I need to Where_

_(substantially tweaked)_

_Don't leave you don't have to we need to need to talk to you don't leave_

_(Tantei-san?)_

_Make it right, curiosity killed the_

_(camping my profile, I see)_

_Where not here where is he? Don't leave Please don't leave_

_(missed it 4 the world)_

_Don't._

* * *

Before tonight, Kid hadn't cried in years; out of practice with the activity, he wasn't able to manage it for long. Ten solid minutes where nothing could touch his attention except pain and frustration was enough to push him to his absolute emotional limit. Unable to sustain such unforgiving contact with the facts he wished with all his heart weren't true, Kid collapsed into sleep through pure self-defense. Shinichi's words haunted his uneasy dreams, and he woke with them hovering about his head like a choking fog.  _(Girlfriend. Eight years old. Girlfriend. Send her roses in my name. Girlfriend.)_

Perversity, and inexperience with this sort of pain, quickly defeated the distraction techniques he tried to use to get himself back to sleep. Restless, Kid found himself halfway to the Kudo mansion before he'd consciously considered the probability that he might find Shinichi there. The thought of seeing the detective while he was feeling like this - and while Shinichi was feeling just as ill and disoriented as Kid - was a daunting one, but the thief proceeded onward if for no other reason than that he was more susceptible than most to the stubbornness that makes a person more willing to take a three-block detour rather than turn back the way they've come when they realize they're headed the wrong way down the sidewalk.

When he got the trapdoor in the back yard open, slipping under ground level with a silence and soft-footed delicacy appropriate to his talent, Kid immediately realized something was amiss. In his black turtleneck and tough black jeans, his standard night-prowling gear, augmented against the weather with an under layer of heat-retaining athletic body armor, a black lycra mask to cover his nose, cheeks and mouth, a snug knit hat, and matching fingerless knit gloves layered over printless, skintight silicone gloves, Kid blended right in to the wall of the underground access tunnel without a second thought, cataloguing the flow and scent of the air. It was fresher than it should have been, warmer too, and even as the cold air that he'd let in through the trapdoor dissipated, Kid slowly sorted out what, precisely, was causing the anamolies.

Nerves on edge, Kid proceeded slowly and silently down the tunnel, taking a fork that he'd not personally walked before, the one leading toward Professor Agasa's house. Though he'd expected something similar, what he found on the floor just past the tunnel's branching, lit by the low yellow glow that washed in through Agasa's open door, still iced over his heart and his common sense as effectively as a sudden blast of winter wind.

"Shin..." Kid silenced himself before he could get the whole name out. The ersatz boy lay on the rough-hewn floor of the tunnel, arms extended past his head as though he had still reached for something beyond his grasp after falling, but before unconsciousness claimed him. He was dressed in flannel pajamas - plenty warm for wearing under the thick bedding of a proper bed. But they were nowhere near warm enough to protect an injured, exhausted, small child's body, laying on the cold subterranean floor of a chill tunnel full of icy winter air.

 _Or, put more simply,_  Kid thought to himself numbly,  _He's underdressed, passed out on the_ _ _ground__ _, and it's winter. He'll probably go hypothermic._

Kid looked to the doorway, illuminated dimly by small lights along the footboard of the wall which showed him the tile floor...and the shadowed folds of a blanket dropped just inside the door, its edge draped across the doorway and onto the top step of the five-stair descent that led to the secret tunnel.

"Benten hold me," Kid cursed softly. Walking softly past Shinichi's small body, he retrieved the blanket, then returned to the boy's side. Spreading the blanket softly across his own arms and Shinichi's side, Kid carefully slipped his arms beneath the detective's neck and knees to lift him in his arms. The blanket slid off of Kid's upper arms, draping itself across Shinichi, as Kid adjusted his grip on his friend's limp body, stunned by the lightness of it.

"Benten, Benten, Benten hold me," Kid whispered fervently, heart pounding as he recognized the terrifying proximity of Shinichi's heartbeat against his own. Carefully he shifted his grip to rest Shinichi's head against Kid's own upper arm; then, softly and carefully, he proceeded back down the tunnel toward Agasa's. Shinichi slept on in his arms, forehead warm through Kid's double layer of clothing. Kid knew if he touched Shinichi's skin with his own, it would be fever-hot.

Up the stairs, through the doorway with a quick prayer against motion-sensing silent alarms, through the living room, and into the back room where Shinichi's transformation had been effected. The bed that Kid expected was there, covers rumpled and thrown back, a glass of water on the small, clinical table beside it.

With utmost care, Kid replaced Shinichi in his bed, leaving the blanket wrapped around him rather than try to detangle it and risk rousing him. He watched the boy's face, so solemn and mature in sleep, as he laid Shinichi's head gently on his pillow. The detective's bangs slid across the bridge of his nose as his head settled into the dip in his pillow, and Kid watched moonlight trace the high, proud cheekbones that were so like his own, so much a part of the intense, nearly unshakeable confidence with which Shinichi did his work. Pulling the heavy stack of blankets and covers back up, folding the edge down just under Shinichi's chin, Kid wrenched himself away from the edge of the bed before he could give in to any of the three or four impulses which gripped him, all of which told him how soft Shinichi's hair might be if he dared touch it, how his fever-hot skin would be helped by a cool washcloth, attentively patted across his brow and temples; how his restless sleep might be calmed by a guardian by his bedside.

As he turned away, a glimpse of Shinichi's profile flitting through the corner of his vision; as he stalked, each foot light, soft, silent, and leaden in front the other, out of the room, through the house, to the tunnel, closing the door behind him; as he tucked his mask higher, hat lower, to shield everything but his bright blue eyes; as he crawled up through the trapdoor and into the cold open air of the Kudo backyard; as he did these things, Kid imagined for a moment that the man in the bed he was leaving behind was his true size, his true form. He imagined that Shinichi, the eighteen-year-old man, lay feverish and unconscious in the professor's storeroom; that Shinichi, his doppelganger and equal, had lain stretched across the coarse floor of the tunnel, collapsed halfway in his quest toward the nighttime sanctuary that he shared with Kid and Kid alone; that Shinichi, sharp chin and smooth cheekbones and angular, critical, insightful eyes, lay under the silverwhite moonbeam on that soft pillow...

Kid imagined these things and bit the inside of his cheek until it bled, knowing that, had these things been true, had he stood at the bedside of that man, held that man in his arms, that he would have, thoroughly and with every ounce of the considerable skill he possessed, careless of the significant chances of being walked in on by Haibara, Hattori, or even Mouri Ran; careless even of distracting the detective from his case, or himself from his own heists; careless of  _ _everything__ , even Shinichi's protest, he would have kissed him until they both collapsed.

 


	18. "Contact, formal, guilt"

**  
**"--had a very restless night, it seems, with a higher fever than I really like," Haibara was explaining to Agasa the next morning at the breakfast table when Heiji stopped by just after 8 a.m., unceremoniously using the key he'd been provided to open the door without a knock or any other advance warning. _Not like I wouldn't stop in an' check on Kudo,_  he thought, toeing his sneakers off in the doorway.  
  
"Yo," he greeted the two, eyeing the little blonde as he allowed his backpack to slip from his shoulder to the ground. "You playin' hooky from kiddie school today, Haibara?"  
  
An unaccustomed quirk of a smile produced unexpected dimples on the small, pale face. "Yes," she answered gravely. "The Professor called in and lied for me  _very_ adroitly; worry about my classmate Edogawa-kun has me upset and in tears, apparently, and he simply couldn't bring himself to submit such an emotional wreck to the rigors of crayons and Reading Hour." She took a bite of her breakfast. "And before you ask, Kudo-kun is doing relatively well, all things considered. He ran quite a high fever, of course, and I caught him attempting to climb out of bed just after dawn in a very altered state of consciousness-- those painkillers I gave him seem to be having a somewhat unusual effect."  
  
"Yeah? Can I see him?"  
  
Agasa nodded, gathering his own breakfast dishes up. "Certainly, Hattori-kun. He's rather, hmm, groggy, but he's been asking after you."  
  
Shinichi raised his hand in a sleepy greeting, lids low over bleary blue eyes, as Hattori closed the sickroom door gently behind himself. "Yo, 'ttori, you're okay? You feelin' okay?"  
  
Hattori removed his hat, raking his hair back with one hand as he lowered himself carefully onto the corner of his friend's bed. "Look who's talking, Kudo," he countered, stretching forward to lay the back of one hand against Shinichi's brow. "Still pretty warm."  
  
Shinichi shook his head slowly. "I'll be fine," he said, trying to sound convincing. But his lips seemed thick; his enunciation slipped between words, and Hattori scooted closer with an unconvinced tsking sigh.   
  
"Not going t'be able to help much," the boy in the bed muttered. He frowned, brows drawing together as he attempted to concentrate. "With the-- dammit-- 'vestigation." Dark blue eyes closed briefly before opening again. "Sure you're okay? Wasn't this... ow... sluggish b'fore." Wincing, Shinichi kicked at the covers over his feet. "Spend too much time'n this bed," he muttered.  
  
Hattori reached over to where the blankets were tucked in at the bed's end, tugging them loose and heaping them a little more comfortably around the small feet; he tugged at one foot-shaped lump, shaking his head. "Well hell, Kudo, never thought you'd be such a total slacker, leavin' me to do all the hard work while you kick back in bed all day," he said in sarcastic tones leavened with a little humor. "....and I never thought you'd be dumb enough to feel guilty about it. Lessee..." He held out his arms, measuring what was more or less a Conan-sized space between them. "Yay tall, less than half've my weight, got smacked by mosta the bike... Sound familiar?" The Osakajin shook his head again, and when his green eyes met the other's the humor had been replaced by Hattori's familiar stubborn affection. "You want to help? _Get better._  That means layin' here and taking a freaking break."  
  
He let go of Shinichi's foot, which he'd been wiggling as punctuation. "And stop with the guilt; makes you look damn stupid, and I  _know_  you're better'n that... despite some've your ideas about taking phone calls from--" Hattori stopped at that point and sighed. "Never mind."  
  
The irritation that had started forming on Shinichi's face faded as quickly as it had begun, and his eyes narrowed with concentration, not criticism. "S' not, not like...y'think he is," he murmured. "And that's...that's what they don't know about him. S'why he's worth..."  
  
"...worth...?" Heiji tried not to ask it; he'd promised himself he wouldn't try to drag any unfair information out of Kudo,  _promised._  But-- just this little bit; he couldn't resist wanting to know the key to the riddle of  _what the hell, Kudo, you went and made friends with that damned lunatic in the white suit and I don't get it..._  "Worth what?"  
  
Shinichi shook his head, emphatic but sluggish, and focused his gaze on his friend as much as he could. But his eyes were already sliding shut, head rolling to one side on his pillow, as he stubbornly forced out his answer.  
  
"Worth...the risk..."  
  
The other detective just looked at him for a long moment, silent. He reached out and snagged Shinichi's foot again, not as emphasis this time but almost, it seemed, as a reassurance to himself. "Risk," he said thoughtfully. "Risk to you; risk to him too, so-- there's somethin' I'm not seeing here. But just because I can't see it don't mean it's not there; detective work inna nutshell, really." He tugged at the blanket-covered foot one more time, gentler than before, and he studied the pale face on the pillow. "Yeah... okay. Gonna trust you with this one, Kudo, I guess." Or as much as his instincts would allow; after all, he reflected, what else could he do? And anyway, it wasn't like anybody was expecting  _him_  to go buddy-buddy with any hang-gliding maniacs, right?  
  
 _.....right. Just-- Kudo's got to have his reasons, but what. the. fuck......? I mean,_ _Kid_ _._  
  
Sliding carefully off the bed, Hattori let go again. "Get some sleep, okay? Gonna head out and take a look at the shipping company's site; I'll let you know how it went when I get back." He lingered in the doorway for a moment, unconsciously flexing the fingers that had held his friend's extremity a moment before; Kudo looked so, so damn  _small_  lying there like that.  
  
Kudo was silent, maybe already asleep; Heiji slipped out of the room with a frown, feeling the size of the situation - pun intended - more painfully than before.  
  
* * *  
  
Shinichi slept the day away, only waking around eleven for a light, dry meal of simple starches - about all he could keep down. To everyone's dismay, the fever of the previous night returned with a vengeance, and Agasa and Ai took shifts with cool washcloths, wiping sweat from Shinichi's small brow and chest, until Ran returned from school an hour early. Agasa, who had called her home as Shinichi slipped into fever dreams, followed Ran into the sickroom. Heiji, who had returned from the shipping site an hour or two previous, was sitting at Shinichi's side.  
  
"Heiji, has he said anything? Anything about...pain?" Ran tied her hair back in a ponytail, shedding school jacket and bags at the foot of the bed. Worry bit her lip, furrowed her brow.  
  
"Nothin' intelligible," Heiji answered, rising from the bedside chair to make room for Ran to sit. "While I've been here, tho, he said your name a lot. Dunno if he was dreaming or what. And..." Heiji frowned, looking away.  
  
Ran's heart caught in her throat. "And?"  _It's okay,_  she tried to reassure herself.  _No matter what Shinichi might have said, we can trust Heiji. It doesn't matter what he said..._  
  
(A monocle gleamed in her memory.)  
  
 _Unless..._  
  
Heiji's answer was reluctant, but clear. "Kid. He called for Kid, once. He didn't say anything after that."  
  
On the bed, Shinichi's hands gripped fistfuls of damp bedding, chest rising with a hard, rough-drawn breath. "Has Ai looked at him?"  
  
"She did," Agasa confirmed, speaking up from the doorway, where the two teens had nearly forgotten about him. "His blood pressure and temperature are rising, but his white count isn't following the pattern that would suggest any...ahm..."  
  
Heiji winced. "Growth spurts?" Agasa nodded emphatically.  
  
"Yes. But his fever should be settling down by now, too, and it hasn't. Ai-chan isn't sure what to make of it, really."  
  
Ran frowned. "Could...Could I try something?"  
  
"Of course, Ran-chan," Agasa answered. Then, when she hesitated to respond, he glanced at Heiji. "Would you like us to, ahm..."  
  
"Please," Ran nodded, glancing apologetically at Heiji. "Sorry, Heiji, it's just a hunch I have. Maybe Shinichi's as scared as we are."  
  
Heiji's suspicious expression didn't fade, but he followed Agasa silently from the room. As soon as they were gone, Ran transferred her grip on Shinichi's hand to his forehead, stroking back his bangs. "Shinichi, you idiot...you're scaring me."  
  
Ran toed off her indoor scuffs, then self-consciously padded across the room to check that the door was firmly latched. As satisfied as she could be about that, Ran crossed back to the bed, and crawled up onto it, laying on her side in the space between Shinichi's tiny body and the wall. She draped one hand across his shoulder gently, nervously bracing her head on one hand so she could look down at her friend.  
  
Almost instantly, Shinichi's body language changed.  
  
Dark blue eyes hazed with fever shot open wide; he stiffened, utterly still as he stared up into Ran's face. She was close enough that her breath made his eyelashes flicker, and, still dazed with the unsettling heat that seemed to lie beneath his skin, could only lie there and blink up at her. His lips moved:  _R--_  
  
"Shhhh," she said quietly, brushing his hair back again. "Don't talk." And she wrapped her arms around him very, very gently and pulled him close. For a moment he resisted, not pulling back but not letting go either; then all the angles seemed to soften, all the tightness and tension seemed to melt and he went boneless in her arms.  
  
"Stop fighting so hard," she whispered, hand tangling in his hair. "Just... whatever's hurting you, you don't have to tell me what it is, but-- I know this is frightening, Shinichi, I know it's worst of all for you. But I'm here, Hattori's here, we're not-- not going anywhere." On top of his head her hand tightened for a moment into a fist, careful not to catch any of the boy's hair before relaxing and touching it softly again with the kind of gesture one'd use to soothe a small animal. "I'm here," she whispered again, and wrapped both arms around him, embracing without confining.  
  
His voice wasn't much more than a breath. "...m'not... C-Conan. Not... not a little boy. Y-you don't have to..." He trailed off, and despite his words Shinichi's hand clutched at Ran's sleeve convulsively and he curled closer to her body, limp and exhausted.  
  
She tucked herself around him like a blanket, bending her head to rest it on the pillow against his, chin brushing the top of his own. "Shhhh. You think I wouldn't do this if you were like you used to be?" Ran's own eyes closed, and she allowed her own body to relax, communicating  _it's alright, it's okay, I have you_  with her warmth and closeness. "Silly."  
  
 _Shinichi, I'm scared too, but I can be brave for you, I can be as strong as you need me to be. I won't let you go. Whatever happens, I won't._  His breathing began to even out, a tired child's rhythm settling-- almost-- towards sleep. Nearly inaudibly, though, she heard him:  
  
"...wish..."  
  
"What?"  
  
The small form in her arms breathed silently for a moment before answering. "Kid," he whispered. "S... something... s' something wrong." The words seemed to wear him out, and he sighed once before the last bit of volition went out of his muscles, shivering once before falling still. Ran's arms tightened.  
  
"We'll check on him, Shinichi," she promised, pressing her face to the pillow and pulling him even closer. His hot skin made hers flush wherever they touched. "Tomorrow, I promise, I'll find him. I'll make sure he's okay for you." Her own promises seemed too confident, too bold in her own ears, but she'd said them...and whether or not Shinichi had even heard her, she wasn't taking them back.  
  
* * *  
  
 _Do yourself a favor, Ran._  In class the next day, Ran ignored the texts Sonoko continued to send her ("Oh, I'm not doing anything much, Sonoko. Just thinking about my three foot tall boyfriend." -- Yeah, like I could tell her that!) and mostly ignored their teacher, doodling in the margins of her notebook while her mind wandered.  _Next time you want to promise Shinichi something, make sure you know how to_ _do_ _it before you promise!_  
  
How, exactly, had she thought she would "check in" on Kid?  _The_  Kaitou Kid? She didn't have his phone number, she didn't have his email, she didn't have his name, and she didn't know his face. And though Shinichi  _did_  have all of these -- a fact which, if Ran stopped to think about it, would be plenty scary on its own -- getting that information from Shinichi in order to contact Kid would be likely impossible. Shinichi of all people  _understood_  confidentiality.   
  
Ran sighed, twirling her bangs between her fingers. Even if, theoretically, Shinichi were willing to share Kid's contact information -- which he wasn't -- would Kid really react positively to Ran  _using_  that information to reach him? That was an easy, certain,  _not flipping likely._  So where did that leave her?  _I might as well try sending smoke signals,_  Ran grumbled, her gaze drifting to the window...  
  
...and latching on the small swallow that was flitting past.  _...Or that would work!_  Her hand was already in the air.  
  
"Mouri-san?" The teacher glanced from the text in her hands to Ran, expectant. Ran had the presence of mind to appear distressed.  
  
"Um, I don't know the answer, I'm sorry, Sensei, but I don't feel well. May I--?"  
  
The teacher waved one hand, glancing around the room at Ran's classmates, none of whom had raised hands. "Anyone else? Page 1413, section K. Anyone?"  
  
 _Bueller has left the room,_  Ran snickered to herself, remembering Shinichi's amusement with that particular American movie. She scooted into the hallway, pocketing the scrap of notebook paper and pen that she had taken from her desk, holding her stomach as insurance against observant passerby. At the first fork, she headed left, away from the nurse's office. The door to the emergency stairwell stood at the far end of the hallway before her, and Ran resisted the urge to run to reach it faster. It was only two floors to the roof, and it was - though cold - a bright, clear day.  
  
She'd noticed the two doves hanging at random moments around ever since, well, since her date with Shinichi: one peach-colored, one pure white, always together. And she'd met Keeta, of course, carrying a note that same morning right to Agasa's window (how did Kid  _do_  that, anyway? Direct the birds so accurately? She'd have to ask him some day, and it really said something about their situation that she might even be able to do just that). So now, if she could just find them-- Maybe if she held out a treat? Ran rummaged in her pockets, hadn't she had a-- yes, she had.  
  
Unwrapping the granola snack-bar, she held it out and turned in a slow circle.  _Please, let it be that easy. One easy thing in the middle of all this, please..._  
  
Maybe Someone was listening (did thieves (or detectives) have kami to pray to?), because there was a faint flutter of wings over by the fence and-- Ran's face crumpled as a line of ordinary, muted-gray city pigeons made little  _brrrt?_  noises back at her from the railing. Her arm drooped a little, and she sighed. Of course it couldn't be that easy; if thieves had a kami they were probably off making police-cruiser tires go flat, and as for detectives...  _their_  kami would almost certainly be busy investigating a horribly important case somewhere far, far away.  
  
Startling the pigeons into flight, the detective's daughter rested face-first against the fence, staring out across the school grounds with the fingers of her free hand tangled in the links; it squeaked as she pressed her face to the cold wires and closed her eyes.  _This was stupid. Of_ _course_ _it wouldn't be this easy; it's not like I have any kind of, of real connection with Kid except through Shinichi and... the doves were probably just passing by or hoping for a handout. This is hopeless. So-- so maybe I could... I don't know, I don't want to go snooping in Shinichi's cellphone records but maybe if I could find a text or...  
  
...or I could pay attention to what just _ _landed_ _on my_ _head_ _._  There was an inquisitive  _"OooooOOO??"_  from above her; claws that she knew to be a surprisingly bright pink scrabbled for purchase in Ran's hair and a beak pecked her lightly right between the eyebrows even as a second feathered body (this one pure white) came in for a landing a few feet down the fence.  
  
 _Thank you. Thank you. Whoever you are._  Maybe thieves and detectives shared the same kami. Maybe He (or She) had had a spare minute to listen. Maybe she was just interesting enough to make them wonder what happened next.  
  
A few minutes later, granola-bar thoroughly pecked to death and feathers well-scritched, the two doves winged their way above the young woman's upturned face with a tiny tightly-rolled twist of paper tucked into the message tube on Keeta's pink ankle. Ran watched them go, fists clenched tight on the cold links of the rooftop fence, hope churning in her stomach before she sighed and pulled away. She still had to stop by the nurse's office if she wanted to keep things relatively honest (and somebody had to, didn't they? Maybe it'd all kind of balance out) and have a hall-pass to take back to class. Maybe the nurse'd even send her home.  _'Could I be excused, please? My boyfriend's got a high fever and I need to make sure he hasn't spontaneously grown ten years while I was away.'_  
  
Oh, that'd work. Not. And anyway... As Ran looked up at the now-blank blue winter sky above her, she smiled slightly, wishing, hoping.  _Anyway, I'm feeling a little better already._ **  
  
* * * * ***

> _Dear Kid-san: I apologize for bothering you like this but it was the only way I knew of to contact you. Shinichi's terribly sick and has been worrying about you. He won't rest, he won't let himself rest until he knows you're alright. I understand that you don't want to put yourself more at risk and you've done so much already but if we all left Shinichi alone in the house could you please come see him? He's at the Professor's (I think you know the room.) I wouldn't ask this favor of you if it wasn't so important to him._
> 
> _Please answer. Even if you can't come, please. We don't know what's wrong but I promised him I'd try somehow to reach you. If you can, as his friend, please help. He needs you. Thank you very much._
> 
> _Sincerely,  
>  Mouri Ran_

  
  
Kid had, unfortunately, been out when Keeta found him. So it was while shadowed under the heat exhaust vents on an unimportant rooftop, dressed in his recon blacks, masked and unmonocled, chilly and off-guard, that he curled up against the hot metal and read and reread Ran's missive. Keeta and Moona made soft  _prrrt_ -ing noises, rubbing up against his chest and ears, while Ran's voice, soft and strong, reread her words in his imagination.  
  
 _He needs you._  
  
Kid rubbed his thumb across the ink in the page's margins, tracing the curves of idly doodled pills, capsules, tablets, and what looked like a small heap of powder. _Drugs on the brain, Mouri-san?_  Kid wondered. The worrisome conclusion - in such proximity to Shinichi's persistent fever - was all too easy of a leap.  
  
 _Kaito,_  Kid called silently, eyes sliding halfway shut to let him focus.  _Kuroba, I need your advice._  A dim noise of interest, like movement heard through a closed door, made Kid call more loudly.  
  
 _Kuroba! I need your help._  
  
Kaito shifted into "view," the illusion of himself taking a seat by Kid's side, back against the same ventilation shaft that kept the thief warm. Twins down to their turtlenecks and the curls of their hair, they sat shoulder to shoulder, staring out at the wintry city. The only distinctions between them were Kuroba's black scarf and Kid's downturned face.  _"What's wrong, Thief?"_  
  
Kid leaned his head against Kaito's shoulder, and the magician held still to accommodate him. "Shinichi. You were right, you were completely right, I'll say you're right about everything. But I'm..."  
  
Kaito read the letter over Kid's shoulder. "That's his girl? Telling you he needs you?"  
  
"I don't want to believe her." Kid's face pinched with emotion. "I don't want to  _let_  myself believe her, because I want to keep away. I don't want to confuse him. I want her to have what she deserves."  
  
"That sounds like love to me," Kaito murmured, and Kid nodded wearily.  
  
"I  _do_  love him. He's--"  
  
"No, not him," Kaito interrupted. "Her. It sounds like you care for Mouri-san's feelings enough to sacrifice your own. That's what a friend would do."  
  
Kid sighed. "A friend wouldn't lust after a taken man."  
  
Kaito ran his hand through Kid's hair, helping the cold rooftop breeze to ruffle its thick waves. "You've never been interested in 'would' or 'should', not once, until you got stuck on him. And  _he's_  not telling you 'shoulds.' He figured that much out a while back."  
  
Kid turned to look at Kaito, honest confusion filling his normally cheerful and confident features. "But what about you? Nakamori-san? I can't--"  
  
Kaito's expression iced over. "Did you ask me for help so you can just use me as your guilty albatross to weigh you down? Or so you can get  _advice?_ " Kid opened his mouth to respond, defensive, and Kaito raised a hand for silence. "Kid, you can't fix my situation. And... I'm too afraid to try to fix it myself. I'd rather hide behind friendship forever than get any closer and end up hurting her. That's just my decision, and I made it a long time ago."  
  
The magician drew his feet up beneath him, rocking forward into a crouch, and let sympathy touch his eyes as he studied his counterpart's utterly lost expression. "You want advice about seeing him? I say you go. You've been keeping away from him for his own good, or the best guess that you can make toward that anyway. Fine. But now she - and she knows him even better than you do - says his own good is for you to see him."  
  
Fear touched Kid's eyes. "What if I--?"  
  
"You're an international criminal, for crying out loud," Kaito sighed, utterly exasperated. "You're supposed to have a handle on your emotions, you're supposed to know what the hell you're doing, and you're supposed to be loved by everybody. Sometime in the last month you've just completely lost track of the first two and you don't seem to give a shit about the last one at all. All you're thinking about is him, or helping him, or--or him."  
  
"And you know what? I can give you an out for all that. I can actually  _understand,_  Kid, why you're such a goddamn mess over him, cause I would be the same way if Aoko would look at me like that - like she couldn't get enough of me, like she loved to be around me and only me, like she found me fascinating and challenging and brilliant and entertaining and magnetizing." Kid, thoroughly flustered by now, had begun to blush from Kaito's implications as much as the bitter cold wind. The magician emphasized his point with a deep frown. "You've got every right to wonder about him."  
  
Kaito stood, pulling his scarf closer around his neck. "What you  _don't_  have an excuse or a right to do is to stop functioning just because you're preoccupied. To stop taking risks and jumping off of fucking rooftops because you're scared. Taking risks and jumping off roofs is what you  _are_."  
  
"I'll let you be preoccupied. I'll let you be upset. I'll let you be  _lovestruck._  You're newer to this than I am even. But I won't, on Benten's name, I will  _not_  let the Kaitou Kid become a coward while I watch."  
  
Kaito walked to the edge of the roof, hopping up to stand on the ledge. "Go do something. Don't think you'll hear from me again until you find the courage to  _do_  instead of  _fear._ " He turned away, facing the city, and opened his arms wide against the wind. "And one more thing, Kid."  
  
"For what it's worth, I'm actually rooting for you." Kaito leaned forward, and the illusion of his image vanished like smoke. Kid felt Kaito's attention retreat into the private recesses of their shared mental space, and he was left on the rooftop alone again, feeling like he'd just finished an exhilarating sparring match with his back flat to the floor, staring up at the ceiling. And the next step, as everyone who's ever lost a sparring match knows, was to get up and turn to face his opponent for the rematch.  
  
 _Well then,_  Kid decided, folding Ran's note tightly and tucking it away safely, in the pocket over his heart. He stood, flexed his legs to wake them up, and sprinted off the edge of the roof.  
  
 _It's showtime._  
  
* * *  
  
She'd explained her idea to the Professor; and he'd quailed but accepted it relatively well (considering that she was asking him to hand over his home and belongings into the care of an acknowledged thief for an unknown period of time.) She'd explained it to Hattori, and after a certain amount of extremely vocal raving, arm-waving, pacing and Kansaibin-accented diatribes regarding both her and Shinichi's sanity, he'd at least agreed with the idea in general and, with exasperation, in practice.  
  
But when Ran had broached the possibility of leaving Agasa's house for a few hours to allow for a certain visitor to visit a certain patient, Haibara Ai had gone completely, unexpectedly ballistic.  
  
Paranoia, whether reasonable or not, doesn't stand down or fade into complaisance with just a few soothing words; by the time the small blonde had at last given a very,  _very_  grudging and conditional consent ("One. Hour. No more, less if at all possible, and if he's still here when we come back I promise you that I will personallyput a bullet through his head, Mouri-san." Her hands had been shaking as she spoke) it was dark outside. Shinichi had settled into an uneasy, fever-haunted sleep, sweat dampening his already disheveled hair as he tossed and turned in the small bed.   
  
"His white cell count's climbing," said Agasa unhappily, putting away various bits of medical paraphernalia following a vital-signs check. "Not drastically, but climbing. This morning we began giving him heavy doses of the same nutrients we used during the experiment, but Shin-chan..." The portly scientist stopped what he was doing, one hand still holding a blood-pressure cuff. "Ran-chan? Do you  _know_  what's troubling him so? I believe his body'd be able to heal better if his mind were easier."  
  
Ran, curled into an exhausted ball across the room beside one of the front windows, nodded shortly. "I think so. I hope so." Her earlier optimism had gotten a little worn and rubbed around the corners with the passing hours, but it was still there... just. Now she turned back to the window, wondering if doves could see to fly at night or if they were as much in the dark as she was beginning to feel she'd been.  
  
She wasn't stupid. But love could make a person blind in more ways than one.  
  
A flash of white outside the window brought Ran - and, consequently, everyone in the room to attention. Even as Hattori began a recap of all his most salient points against Ran and Shinichi's sanities, and Agasa reached down to grip Ai's shoulder in a calming gesture, Ran rose from the couch to check on Shinichi one last time, the flash of color she'd seen settling oddly in her mind for reasons she couldn't identify.  
  
It was around then that the doorbell rang.  
  
All four faces pivoted toward the front of the house - Ai's and Hattori's expressions warring between horror and anger; Agasa's showing pure shock. Ran felt lucky that she was furthest from the door - which meant nobody noticed the way her heart caught in her throat, writ large across her face.  
  
Ai was the first to speak. "Mouri-san, I believe that's for you."  
  
"Y-yes," Ran stammered, rushing forward to the door and peeking through the view hole. What she saw made her collapse against the door, mouth slack.  
  
"Neechan, you okay?" Hattori was darting toward Ran almost instantly, but she put a hand out to stop him, and he fell still about twenty feet from the door. Ran stood facing it, her posture braced for challenge. When she spoke, one hand moving slowly to curl around the doorknob, her tone was sweet and a little distant.  
  
"You should stay back, Hattori. Ai-chan, if you don't want him to see you, maybe you should be in another room. Or you could make sure to watch him. That's...I think he'd be okay with it either way. Professor, may I?"  
  
Agasa blinked once, recovering from his frozen state somewhat. "Err-- I, ahh--  _wait._  Yes." He cleared his throat, went to a wall-panel in the front hall nearest the door, flipped it open and pressed a complex pattern of buttons. "There, that should do it."  
  
Ai had been watching; now she turned an outraged face towards the Professor and opened her mouth to speak. But the gray-haired man shook his head admonishingly. "Ai-chan, this is for the best, believe me... and I believe we'd  _all_  be best off a room or two away, don't you?" He gave the others a hangdog look, indicating the panel. "Alarm systems, cameras, monitoring, security... they're all off now. No photos; if that's indeed your, erm, guest, then--"  
  
Hattori gave the panel a particularly wistful expression. "Not even  _one_  camera? Just, y'know, because? Like a souvenir, Kudo'd love a --No? Dammit, Agasa..." Crestfallen, the Detective of the West trailed reluctantly towards the door that led towards Agasa's capacious library. "Haibara, you comin'?" The diminutive blonde stared mistrustfully at the still-unopened door before her jaw tightened and she swung away, furious and highly unnerved, pushing past Heiji. Hands in pockets, the Osakajin looked mournfully at the door one last time (rather like a dog who'd like to bark but whose owner has a rolled-up newspaper handy) before following the girl.  
  
"Ran-chan? If you need us..." Agasa lingered in the doorway, worry written in every crinkle and line of his face. She nodded, still looking at the front entrance; he shrugged, sighed, and pulled the door shut behind him. Distantly she could hear his footsteps fading away.  
  
Again she peeked through the viewing hole in Agasa's front door - and this time saw nothing but his darkened front walk. The lights that should have illuminated it were out - Ran didn't know if their controls were included in Agasa's wall panel, or whether Kid had taken precautions into his own gloved hands, but against the darkened path she still figured  _some_  lightness should have showed up - he was wearing stark white, after all!  
  
She flipped the locks open, took a deep breath, and pulled the door open wide, staring straight out onto the empty stoop. With her mouth halfway open in nearly comedic letdown, Ran was taken completely off-guard when Kid folded himself out of the shadows to the left of the doorway - where he'd been leaning, completely still, against the front of the house - and grinned broadly at her. Ran smiled back, gaze lingering on the reflection of her own face in the monocle that covered half of his face.  
  
Top hat to toes, this was truly the Kaitou Kid. Uniform suit pressed crisply and neatly, cape a fluid, heavy punctuation of every movement he made; jaw thin, visible eye richly blue, immaculately knotted tie and manically wide grin of greeting, Kid stood at attention in front of Ran, heels of his patent leather shoes snapping softly as they clicked together, and held the trademark expression for a long moment. All he really needed, Ran reflected numbly, was a spotlight or three.  
  
"Come on in, they'll see you," she murmured, reaching forward without thought to gently guide him by the elbow in the door. "Thank you for coming." Ran closed and locked the door, then locked it again just to be sure. Not that a normal door lock would even be enough to insult Kid - but it reassured her. A little. Satisfied that she'd done what little bit she could to settle her terrified, rabbit-fast heart, Ran turned around and found her brain skidding to a halt yet again.  
  
Kid was bent over in the genkan, busy removing his shoes in a fastidiously efficient manner. Laces neatly loose, he set them one beside the other, cape thrown over his back on the far side to keep it out of his way while he worked. He looked up at her - hat staying perfectly in place despite the improbable angle - and the soft smile he gave her was genuine.  
  
"Thank you for writing me, Mouri-san," Kid said, straightening and reaching up to his shoulder to fiddle with the shoulderpad discs of his cape. With several substantial clicks, it came loose, and he held it up with a politely questioning expression. "Anywhere I can hang this?"  
  
".....of course," she said, mouth working on automatic as if she received formal visits from well-mannered criminal masterminds every day. "Right over there--?" Professor Agasa's bentwood coat-tree received something rather more unusual than the normal jacket and umbrella, and Ran fought back an urge to touch the shining folds of white that draped nearly to the tiles below. "And, and you're welcome." She took in a deep breath and asked the question that she knew needed asking, first and foremost: "Do... you want me to leave? I promised, and I will. I can go in with the others if--" Her sentence broke off; she meant it, she  _really did,_  but it was hard.  
  
Kid's eyes flickered a light of understanding, but his expression didn't acknowledge the question. "Show me where he is, please?"  
  
Heart still beating hard, Ran nodded. This person before her, this Kid, was both remarkably similar to the one she'd met on the night of Shinichi's transformation and hauntingly different-- just as difficult to predict, but with the same grin, same air of caution and care. Without a word she turned, leading him down the hall towards Shinichi's small room.  
  
At the doorway, Kid hung back for a moment, taking stock of the scene within. Shinichi lay under tangled covers, fitfully tensing and twisting in his sleep. The tiny, unventilated room smelled of sweat and illness; Shinichi's skin was visibly clammy, sticking his bangs to his brow. He frowned, shifting position, and fell still again.  
  
Quietly, Kid moved the few paces to Shinichi's bedside, unbuttoning his jacket for mobility as he sat down beside Shinichi's feet. Kid glanced to Ran, who stood watching with what he could only guess was a mix of intensity and fear, then reached up the bed to stroke Shinichi's brow, smoothing hair and sweat away from his eyes with soft, supply gloved fingers.  
  
In the bed, Shinichi stirred, then with effort worked his eyes open a slit, blearily focusing on the face bent over him. "Ran...?"  
  
Kid's smile was slight, his voice soft. "Try again, meitantei."  
  
The triangular clover-charm swung back and forth; Shinichi's pupils contracted visibly as he tracked the movement, blinking. Awareness followed sight and he shook his head slightly against the pillow as if brain and belief weren't talking to each other just now. "....uh?" He stared at the swinging charm; stared past it at Kid's face, monocle and all; stared past  _him_  at Ran; and shook his head again, slumping back. "Dreaming," he muttered restlessly, but his gaze tracked back to Kid's face. "Dreaming. Both've you here." He sighed, a trace of a smile quirking the corner of his lips.  
  
"Is it a good dream?" Kid asked in return, scooting back a little to let Ran take the chair at the head end of the bed. She wrapped both hands around one of Shinichi's, swallowing the small fingers within the cover of her own, and smiled through nervousness at her friend.  
  
"I asked him to come and see you. You were so upset, and you kept calling for him. You kept getting worse and we didn't know why."  
  
Shinichi nodded with an effort, slowly processing this; when the equation finally clicked into place, he looked quickly, with alarm, to Kid.  
  
"The others-- Ai--"  
  
"Are in the other room," Kid answered softly. "Mouri-san offered to remove everyone but you from the house, but I wouldn't feel right putting the Professor and Ai-chan out of their house at this late hour, on such a cold night." He paused, mischief slowly becoming visible in his eyes, bright grin spreading like a lamp turned slowly to brightness. "The chance to cause Hattori-san such apoplexy might also have been an attractive aspect of the plan."  
  
The very faint sound might have been a snort if it hadn't been so feeble. "You... want to do that, just... steal his hat, 'r turn it some sort've color. He'd..." He swallowed, wincing. "He'd lose it." Slowly he pushed at the bed, trying to sit upright; Ran slid her hands behind him, gently adjusting the pillows. Shinichi smiled up at her a little, his gaze traveling between Ran and Kid. "Still-- can't believe you're both here," he said with a little less difficulty, and as he looked up at Kid again, the quirk growing at the corner of his mouth grew. "Formal visit, huh?"   
  
"Nothing less than you deserve," Kid purred, his smirk immovable. "Mouri-san thinks there's been something on your mind. As such an exemplary listener and keeper of secrets, I'm here to hear your woes." He beamed. "You get forty five minutes of session. The last fifteen minutes of our one hour appointment will be allotted to insurance purposes, allowing me to leave early to make sure that Haibara has no excuse to make good on her animosity. My fees, of course, are exorbitantly high."  
  
Beside Shinichi, Ran put her hand to her mouth. She wasn't going to giggle, she  _wasn't..._  Nervousness still swam loops in her stomach, and yet-- the face of the boy in the bed was still lined and exhausted, but the gray tinge that had been present since he'd fallen ill seemed a little less, and there was an alertness coming back to the dark blue eyes that had been missing.   
  
And apprehension, that too; Ran's amusement faded into concern as Shinichi took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second. "Yeah, well... might have to-- put it on my tab." She brushed his hair back in an echo of the same touch that Kid had offered a few moments earlier.  
  
"Back when I first started chasing you," he began, voice still a little unsteady, "I used to have these, these moments... when I'd know if you were around. Thought at first it was just coincidence, but," (he paused a second, swallowing again; Ran looked up at Kid; he nodded, pouring a glass of water from the bedside table. Shinichi accepted it gratefully.) "But it happened too often, and... I don't know. Most've the time I'd find out later you'd been there, or I'd deduce it, or..." Hands shaky on the glass, he took another swallow.  
  
"I never got used to it. It-- was like--" Shinichi turned his head, gaze flickering to Ran's face. "--like when Ran was in trouble a few times; human beings  _do_  that, gain a, a sense of people that they--"  
  
He stopped.  
  
"And. And I knew something was..." Shinichi looked directly at Kid, weariness warring with the need to speak. "That first night I was sick. I--think I dreamed, or, or... I don't know." Gaze fixed on the other's, the mind inside the sick child's body driving the boy to finish. "You were unhappy or hurting or injured somehow. Couldn't let it go; and then... it wouldn't let  _me_  go."  
  
Shinichi slumped back, eyes lidding almost closed again. "While I was sick, while I was sleeping, all I could think about was... Ran and you. I had-- bad dreams, you were both in trouble or I couldn't help you or we were lost or... God." The effort was almost too much. "I sound like a real," he half laughed, a gasp of sound, "idiot, don't I?"  
  
 _Poker Face,_  Kaito reminded Kid, tapping him on the shoulder to try to gain his attention. Focused too intensely on the boy in front of him, Kid raised a mental hand to stay Kaito's further words; the Magician ignored it.  
  
 _You have your_ _Poker Face_ _,_  he reminded Kid again, voice intent.  _It'll hide you. Use it._  
  
 _"I don't want to hide in front of him,"_  Kid murmured gently to his counterpart.  _"If I have to hide from my friend, I'm no longer his friend."_  
  
To Shinichi, Kid raised his gaze slowly, deliberate and considering. Then, just as deliberately, he removed his top hat, stripping away the moderate shadow that it provided him, turning his monocle into nothing but a glass sliver - no protection at all. What Ran had or hadn't yet seen wasn't even a concern to him as he bared his face for her to see; Shinichi had already seen him bare like this, and it was to Shinichi that Kid addressed himself.  
  
"I carried you home from the tunnel that night," he began quietly, the closeness of his tone implying confession, maybe even shame. "I found you halfway to the old house - the library. I was heading there, myself. You were burning up with fever, but you would have frozen during that night if I'd left you. I wrapped you in your blanket and carried you back here. I put you to bed, covered you, left."  
  
It was hard for Kid to breathe through the tightness in his chest, the certainty that even by staying away from Shinichi he couldn't have avoided this situation: a confessional with the purity of Ran's faith as witness. Shinichi had nearly said it, hadn't he?  _"A sense of people that they--"_  What had he wanted to finish it with? How closely would Shinichi's words have echoed Kid's own? And what to make of Shinichi's sixth sense of him, in and of itself? What significance could Kid safely ascribe to it - not assuming too much, not concluding too little?  
  
For once, Kid's preparedness for the situation handicapped him, rather than helping him. What he wanted to say was on paper now, for the first time and for good, and already delivered to the hands, if not yet the eyes, of his audience. Now, Kid felt neither the ability to answer candidly, and give too much; nor remain closemouthed, and belie the openness with which he'd promised himself - and Kaito - to approach Shinichi. And there were certain things that, though implied, Kid was still not yet ready to directly say.  
  
He looked to Shinichi steadily, without flinching, as he licked his lips and continued quietly. "I...can tell you everything if you want. I'd rather keep a few things to myself for the moment, though. They'd do no good to air out just yet. But I can tell you -- your instinct wasn't wrong. You can rely on it, if you wanted to."  
  
Silence. Strangely enough, it was Ran who spoke, very quietly: "Kid? Are-- are you alright now?"  
  
Startled, the thief pulled his gaze from Shinichi's weary face to Ran's. It was a long moment before he spoke, one in which his eyes changed and shifted like the suddenly broken surface of a deep millpond. "I can't give you an unqualified yes to that, unfortunately."  
  
Shinichi's weary gaze shifted between them, one after the other, settling at last on Kid's. "Will you be?" he asked simply. "How can I help?" His childish face, drawn as it was, had a spark of purpose in it that hadn't been there before.  
  
The sharp, deep, wrenching pain that ripped its way across the Kid's expression was only visible for a split second, less than even that, before his Poker Face slammed down in self-defensive retaliation against the honesty of it. And a moment later, that Poker Face had been twisted back into the open, honest, tiredly smiling expression that Kid had held through most of the conversation.  
  
But that split second had been enough.  
  
"Kid--" Shinichi's own expression mirrored his distress, clearer and less practiced than Kid's in prevarication. "...I... alright. You said you didn't want to tell everything, but I--" He shook his head, and when he spoke again his child's voice was low and very tired but firm. "When you need to tell me, you put it on  _your_  tab. 'Cause I'll listen." He slumped back, exhausted.  
  
Ran had been watching them both, her expression becoming more and more troubled. She said nothing, but when she reached out again to brush her fingers against Shinichi's hair, they lingered there; and the look she turned to Kid was almost the same she'd given the boy beside her.   
  
If she could have, if she'd dared, she might have reached out a second time... her fingers had faltered before the impulse could reach them, but the thought was still there. Later, she'd wonder what had prompted it; the link between the other two in the small room had been so  _strong,_  so tangible, that saying or doing anything (even her one quiet question) had felt like an intrusion. And Kid... everything within her very limited knowledge of his nature said that despite his extravagant, manic public 'face' there was an extremely private person behind the display. Extremely private; what right did she have to even think of reaching out?  
  
Why would she even begin to believe that there was any sort of comfort that he'd take from her, anyway? The hand of a friend? He was here for  _Shinichi._  She'd invited him herself. But... that look...  _Hurting and knowing he was going to hurt even more, like..._  Ran bit her lip, shuttering away her own confusion in the extended moment of silence following Shinichi's offer. But the thought remained, beating restless wings against a corner of her mind:  
  
 _...like_ _ **I**_ _was, waiting for a year without knowing, willing to let myself be hurt again because the alternative was worse than the pain._  
  
A silent moment followed Shinichi's offer, in which Kid neither accepted nor rejected the detective's offer. The room's quiet slowly approached awkwardness, walking the edge of it as the spaces between the trio seemed to warp. Just as Ran began searching for something to say to rejuvenate the conversation, Kid reached into an interior pocket of his jacket and withdrew a small item, drawing both the others' interest.  
  
As Kid uncoiled the small leaden fishing weight at the end of the line from the sturdy, clear filament connected to it, Shinichi made a soft sound of recognition, a weak smile tucked into the corner of his mouth. "That's how you...floated. In the library," he realized, and Kid's secretive smile utterly ignored, for the moment, Ran's presence in the room.  
  
"These little gems are useful for a number of things," Kid murmured, paying out three feet of filament. Then, with a quick spin and release, he sent the plumb weight streaking into the corner of the room directly behind himself. It smashed with perfect accuracy into the lightswitch, throwing the room into moonlit shadow, and the door swung open as Hattori Heiji, high school detective and sometime eavesdropper, bobbled into view, startled off-balance by his sudden discovery.  
  
Kid hopped lightly onto the bed, one foot to either side of Shinichi's short legs, and swept his top hat onto his head at a rakish angle. The moonlight from the small, high window in the back of the room cast a halo about the edges of his hair and outlined the slim lines of his close-fitting suit; the light spilling in from the doorway bounced off his monocle, gleaming back at Hattori strongly enough to make him flinch back a step.  
  
Or maybe that was just the effect of seeing the god damn  _Kaitou Kid_  poised territorially, proud and shameless, above Hattori's friends.  
  
In the bed, Shinichi struggled to sit up, eyes wide with pure alarm; Ran's chair clattered over sideways as she shoved herself to her feet, dismay written large in every line of a body that kept wanting to go into a defensive posture before  _No, it's_ _Hattori-kun_  pushed the impulse aside. And as for Hattori Heiji himself--  
  
He looked... angry, betrayed, guilty; uncertain, worried... an entire range of negative emotions and reactions, registering one after the other and knotting his fists at his sides. He stared at the three in the tiny room; they stared back... and it didn't take a genius to register the fact that there was a line drawn in the figurative sand between them, with Hattori on one side and Shinichi, Ran and Kid on the other.  
  
It didn't take very long for that little fact to dawn in Heiji's eyes, either; a lot of the fight went out of him then in a slump of shoulders, and he sagged against the doorjamb. "Kudo. GodDAMMIT, Kudo."  
  
"Hattori--" Shinichi was reaching for his friend with his voice, striving across the room while his body struggled to quickly follow. He pushed himself to his knees with effort, shoving his way around Kid's calf toward the doorway. "Hattori, he's not--"   
  
A deep muscle spasm, surely triggered by the boy's attempt at quick motion, doubled him over in a moan of pain, and despite his anger, Hattori reacted without thought, pushing off the doorframe toward his friend, forgetting for the moment that he'd have to go through Kid to get to him. Similarly, Ran lunged for the bed, getting tangled up in her fallen chair on the way.  
  
Kid was faster than either of them, of course. When they both pulled up short -- Hattori at the foot of the bed, scowling into the shadows, Ran at its midpoint, moonlight in her eyes as she faced the bed -- it was to watch Kaitou Kid adjust his grip on Shinichi's shoulders and head, all of which had awkwardly gotten piled into Kid's lap. The thief shifted his support on the boy's body carefully, replacing Shinichi on his pillows. He gently supported the back of the detective's head as he settled him again, focusing his attention not on the threat at the foot of the bed but on the delicacy that Shinichi's illness demanded. Shinichi, expression drawn, held tightly to Kid's gloved hand as he sunk into his pillows, his gaze looking straight through Kid's monocle, reflection or no, to the face beyond.  
  
Ran rounded the bed quickly, coming to Heiji's side. "Hattori, it's okay, Kid was just--"  
  
"Leaving," Kid cut in, using his performance voice, its somewhat haughty tones familiar, if grossly inappropriate for the moment. "Excuse me, Hattori-san," he began, raising one fist above his head. Nobody in the room doubted it contained a smokescreen capsule.  
  
"--don't," said Hattori flatly. "I'll close my goddamn eyes, but  _don't._  He--" (and he pointed at Shinichi) "--doesn't need t'breath it in. You want me to face the wall or something, fine. Knock me out, whatever, I don't care." The Osakajin gritted his teeth, frustration turning his next words into a growl. "But don't give me another shitload of guilt to deal with, or him any more problems, got that? Just... don't."  
  
There was silence as Kid lowered the capsule. Shinichi and Ran held their tongues - wisely, but with difficulty - and finally the soft tap of feet returning to the tile floor predicated Kid's next words. His face sunk entirely into shadow as he stepped away from the bed, putting Ran at his back and Hattori closer to Shinichi than himself. It was a dual gesture - stepping away from the disputed territory (Kid's sense of precision recoiled at using such a clumsy term to refer to Shinichi) and onto equal ground with his opponent, and at the same time raising his own protections of shadow and concealment.   
  
"Guilt, tantei? Have I done something to cause that?"  
  
Deep breath; Hattori deliberately turned his head away and stared at the wall. "No. That was me. Now get the hell out've here so we can call Ai and Agasa." Jaw set, he closed his eyes and clenched them tight. "....and... for what it's worth..."  
  
"....m'sorry."  
  
For a moment, Kid's head bowed in recognition, expression tightening...though in the gloom it was doubtful that Hattori could see. Then he reached back to touch Ran's shoulder, a gesture made smaller and less warm by their audience, and in the next moment he was gone. Not really through the door...and not really  _not_  through the door...just gone.  
  
Curled into his pillows, chest still tight with pain, Shinichi looked from Ran...to Heiji.  
  
"Is he gone?"  
  
The boy coughed, trying to speak; Ran put a hand out onto his shoulder, pulling herself against him protectively and he shivered once, tremors running through the small frame. "Yes," she said, voice non-committal. "He's gone."  
  
"I really fucked up, didn't I, neechan?"  
  
"You really did, Hattori-kun. Now go get the others, please?"  
  
Eyes weary almost past the point of comprehension watched him go; and then Shinichi turned his face and pressed it against Ran's embrace, saying nothing at all.  
  
* * *  
  
Shinichi was pronounced to be dangerously exhausted, still running a fever (though quite a lot lower than before) and with a slowly climbing white-cell count that made Ai create a new chart that employed conditional formatting and ominous colors; Agasa, forehead creased with worry, provided more heavy-duty nutrient injections and some sort of sedative that sent the patient into a heavy, boneless sleep that lasted far into the night.  
  
When he awoke at last, light-headed and oddly numb in his extremities, the bedside clock read 1:43 AM and Hattori Heiji sat in the farthest corner of the room, arms crossed and head tipped back against the wall. His feet were propped on the corner of Shinichi's bed, and the mothwing shadows beneath his closed eyes said that he'd probably not been asleep for very long.  
  
For a few long moments, the boy was content to merely lie there and study him. Heiji was frowning in his sleep, brows drawn together in a scowl; his eyelashes threw spiky shadows in the dim lamp-light, and the hollows beneath his cheekbones were more pronounced than usual. The injury that had darkened one had faded; the bandage at Heiji's hairline was gone, its place taken by an inky watercolor-blob of bruise that showed dark against his skin. His hat, for once, was missing.  
  
In short, he looked like hell.  
  
Shinichi could sympathize; he  _felt_  like hell, and in this quiet room with no other sound than the faint tide of Hattori's breathing, he could think about that a bit. His skin felt too tight, a fading patina of fever still seething just beneath; and his head still pounded. But even with all that, his mind was peculiarly clear for the first time in... how long? How long  _had_  he been sick, anyway? By the looks of Hattori's bruises, not all that long... but not just a day or three either. A week? A little more?  
  
But he was awake now, and (his body prodded at him) he was going to have to get up at some point soon and find a bathroom. God.  
  
Lying there in the half-light, watching Heiji twitch ever-so-slightly in his sleep, thoughts and memories chased themselves through Shinichi's head. They seemed to have been organizing themselves while he slept; somehow, things were far less confused than before, though no less urgent or convoluted.  
  
Item One (in order of immediacy rather than importance): Hattori had pulled the kind of stunt the night before that ends friendships. From what Shinichi remembered he was  _aware_  of what he'd done, or had sounded like it anyway. If they were going to salvage things, they needed to do so ASAP. Top priority.  
  
Item Two: Shinichi'd... Oh. He'd told Kid about the Thing, the one where he knew about his being nearby and about Ran being endangered. The one he'd tried to ignore before its sheer persistence had taken it from fluke into definable quantity. And he'd  _never_  said anything about it before, not to Agasa or Ai or Hattori or Ran or... anyone. And he'd extrapolated on it, too, and then he'd talked about having the same sense for Ran, and it didn't take a tantei to do basic math, now did it?  
  
 _Aaack._  Shinichi closed his eyes; sighed once in trepidation and relief, opened them again.  _Only one truth, Kudo. Remember that._  
  
Item Three: There was something else going on with his body medically, something that concussion and its after-effects didn't cover. Haibara and the Professor'd been discussing something a few too many times for him to ignore, both in the bedroom and outside when they thought he couldn't hear-- something about 'flashbacks' and build-ups of toxins and... They obviously weren't going to tell him unless he asked.  _Time to remind them that I'm not really a little kid, hm? If something's going on, I need to know about it._  
  
Item Four:  _What the hell_  was going on with the  _cows?_  He--  
  
Hattori stirred, one hand coming up to rub at a closed eye, which blinked blearily; it fixed on Shinichi's own, and the other opened so as to join the party.   
  
"...Yo, Kudo. How're you feelin'?"  
  
"Out of the loop," Shinichi answered, bracing his palms against the sheets and shoving hard. He made it about halfway to vertical before the sheets slid, wrecking his grip, and he slammed back down, the back of his head glancing off the headboard before landing on the pillow. A moment of silence followed, like the boggle-and-stare after a particularly excellent pratfall, in which Shinichi closed his eyes wearily.  
  
"Just...don't even say it," he sighed.  
  
Hattori covered his eyes with one hand. "How 'bout you just  _stay put_  an' ask me to help, next time? I'm right here."  
  
Shinichi scowled. "Yeah, I can see that. Good thing, too." The anger and hurt that he'd managed to avoid so far reared their ugly heads as red sparkles danced across the inside of his eyelids. "Am I going to have to go the 'seeing is believing' route with you now or what?" Blinking back the distortion, he opened his eyes again, pushing ineffectually at the mattress a second time. "Were you  _trying_  to figure out a way to-- aagh!" His hands slipped once more.  
  
"For crissake," Heiji snapped, exasperated, taking two long strides across the room to catch Shinichi and help him prop himself against the headboard, pillows arranged for comfort. "Stop smackin' your head on things."  
  
"Why? Everybody needs a hobby," groused Shinichi, subsiding with a sigh of relief. For a long, long moment neither said anything. Then: "Hattori? Next time,  **knock** , okay?" Exasperation mixed with weary affection pushed the more negative emotions down a little. "I think you took a couple've years growth off me, and I can't really spare them." He rubbed at his temples. "Oww... Is there any water left?"  
  
Without comment, Heiji filled the everpresent glass at Shinichi's bedside with cool water, then passed it carefully over. "Haibara said t'keep ya hydrated." Shinichi drank it, then offered the glass back; Heiji refilled it and waited silently while Shinichi drained that, as well.  
  
"Ran hasn' lit into me yet," he finally offered, awkwardly contrite. "Said she was gonna sleep on it an' wallop me in the morning." He leaned back in his chair, raking one hand through his hair with a frustrated sigh. The moonlight shining through the little room's high window was approximately as bright as the low incandescent glow from a nightlight Ran had installed on the far wall's baseboard. The combination of lights, blue moonlight and yellow bulb, shaded Shinichi's face in sharp contrast, color-tinting each cheek a different hue; blue spilled into yellow across his lips and chin, where his frown angled the skin. Heiji faced the window, cool blue light smoothing the lush hue of his skin; the yellow nightlight lit his body from behind, curving warm-gold petals of light around the sharp edges of his coldly lit shoulders and arms.  
  
"If you're feeling up to it," he finally offered, hesitating only slightly as Shinichi's gaze lifted to pay his words attention, "Ya can get a jumpstart on her and start in on me now, if y'want."  
  
"What, and mess up the job you're doing on yourself already? No thanks." The dry tone mixed oddly with Shinichi's childish register, but the expression in his eyes was clear enough. "We could beat each other up over this all night... or we could let it go. But you owe an apology."  
  
"Already apologized to Neechan," Heiji muttered, then cut Shinichi off as the boy quickly began to protest. "I know, I know. Need t'make another one, too." He didn't expand on the thought, leaving all the indications of  _to whom_  unsaid and implied.  
  
"Yeah, well... You remember when we were talking in the park right after you got here?" Shinichi met Heiji's green eyes with his dark blue ones, tired but clearer than they'd been in days and lacking the disassociation that had so slowed down his speech. "I said I wouldn't break my word to Kid-- I'd keep his secrets-- and that I wouldn't lie to you. Still doing that so far, Hattori; help me with it, okay?"  
  
"And," he added after a second, "as for Ran? I'd run. She's got one hell of a mean right hook." The first grin he'd been able to manage since he awoke quirked up one corner of his mouth.  
  
Heiji cringed, picking his hat up off the floor and fiddling anxiously with it. "Think that's an understatement," he grumbled. But when he glanced up through his hair at Shinichi, he had a little smile of his own, too. "...She the only one I'm gonna have to worry about gettin' pissed at me?"  
  
Shinichi rolled his eyes and then winced. "Depends. Trust me to not be a total idiot about who  _I_  trust and we're good. I'm--sorry you were worried. And as for anybody else..." and he looked at the ceiling. "Who knows? Depends on just how much you annoyed him and how much he thinks he can make you twitch."   
  
The conversation and its subject was draining the few resources that he had, and sleep was trying to pull him back under. But first-- "Hattori? Can you do two things for me?" At the other's inquiring look, Shinichi fixed him with the best direct look he could manage. "First, tell me what Agasa and Ai're so worried about. I  _know_  there's something going on, and I think it's got to do with why I'm still so damn sick. What is it?"  
  
Hattori had the grace to look embarrassed. "You heard alla that?" Shinichi gave him a Look. "Okay, okay. It's not anythin' big, just some side effects Haibara's worried about. No big deal."  
  
"HATTORI. Spill it." The headache, which had apparently skipped off briefly to take a smoke-break, was returning and bringing along friends. "WHAT side effects?"  
  
"I'm tellin' ya, Kudo, nothin' t'worry about. No big deal. Jus'...maybe y'might go tall again. But it probably wouldn't stick long anyway so ya don't hafta worry, and Haibara says if it doesn' stick the first time y'might get a second try at it...an' a third...an' a fourth... Uhm. Why're you lookin' at me like that, Kudo?"  
"  
"......Details. Now. No, later." Shinichi ran a hand across his face, covering his eyes much as Heiji'd done a little earlier. "Not now, I can't think straight. But-- just-- aaaagh..." He subsided, pale to the hairline at the thought of becoming some sort of chronological yoyo.   
  
Heiji gave his best attempt at an optimistic grin. "Well, if ya get tall again, at least you got Ran to make you feel better?"  
  
The boy in the bed eyed him, eyebrows rising. "Keep it up and I'll tell her you think she hits like a girl. And, uh, Hattori?" He winced, looking uncomfortable. "About that second thing?"  
  
One of Heiji's eyebrows slid tentatively higher than the other. "Uh? I figured I'd write something down and make you give it to him."  
  
"No, not THAT second thing, the  _other_  second thing." Shinichi squirmed slightly, desperate. "Could you, uh, help me get to the bathroom? Right now? Please?"  
  
Heiji blinked, then laughed, and reached forward to fold Shinichi's blankets back from his lap, tucking one arm under Shinichi's knees and the other around his shoulders. "Get your arm 'round my neck, and let's go."  
  
*  
  
  



	19. "Rose, meeting, distraction"

_Book Two, Chapter Eleven_ _: "Rose, meeting, distraction"  
  
_ **  
** *** * * * *** **  
**He slept, a deep, dream-ridden sleep that for the first time in too long lacked the fever that had been igniting his dreams into nightmares. When Shinichi awoke at last it was to a dazzle of winter sunlight filtering through his room's small window and breaking into long stripes across his face as someone-- Haibara-- adjusted the curtains. At the rustle of sheets she paused, and he could see her reflection smile faintly in the window-glass. "Good morning, Kudo-kun. Did you sleep well?" she asked prosaically, hands still.  
  
He yawned, not quite willing to do anything so energetic as stretching just yet. "Weird dreams," he murmured, voice rusty.  
  
The scientist nodded as if that had been answer enough. "'Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms; in the morning we must sweep out the shadows,'" Ai answered calmly. "Gaston Bachelard," she added in response to his confused blink. "A very erudite French philosopher; he wrote  _The Formation of the Scientific Mind._  Breakfast or vital signs?"  
  
"Ergh?"  
  
Turning around and leaning against the wall, the blonde laced her hands in front of her. "Would you prefer," she said slowly and distinctly, "your breakfast first or for me to take your vital signs? Assuming you want the former and still have the latter."  
  
"Uh-- breakfast?"  
  
"Patient shows signs of increased comprehension," Ai murmured as she left the room, her little smile just barely a hint but still there; "Prior diagnosis of reduced mental faculties possibly premature..."  
  
 _Ha very ha, Haibara. Don't quit your day job._  Shinichi yawned again, wiggling his toes beneath the blankets; they ached.  _Oww._  Everything ached. But he was feeling-- better? Clearer-headed, more rested, all of that; breakfast (and even vital signs) sounded like something he could handle reasonably well.  
  
With effort, Shinichi braced his hands on the bed beside him and pushed.  _No slipping this time,_  he promised himself. Edging his rear backwards and locking his elbows straight, Shinichi braced himself and double-checked the world before he was satisfied that both it, and he, were staying put. The room wasn't swimming, his head wasn't pounding, the bedsheet beneath his pillow wasn't soft, and for the immediate moment, at least, things were more-or-less in their right places.  
  
...Wait a second.  _Back to that last one. That can't be right...._  
  
Shinichi flexed the hand that had slid under his pillow. Something crinkled against his fingertips, and he yanked it out from beneath the pillow with a quick motion.  
  
 _Tantei,_  the paper, an even, narrow strip which seemed intended for either a very small register or an adding-machine, read. Shinichi felt a wide grin snap into place across his features, even before he'd tugged the next foot of paper - bearing the next sentence - out from under his pillow.  
  
 _I write this before having delivered it, a fact which when considering anyone but yourself or myself would be self-evident. But this is us, so it doesn't hurt to state clearly that I'm writing this before seeing_  (Shinichi pulled more tape out from under his pillow, careful not to rip it.)  _you; after Mouri-san's summons, but before I attempt the insanity that is confronting your friends on residential territory. I have no doubt Mouri-san, and you, if you are awake when I arrive, will defend me; I am surprised that I don't feel upset by that idea, the thought_  (Again Shinichi pulled more tape free of the pillow, mostly oblivious to the small pile of coiled paper tape that was gathering at his right hip.)  _that I could find use for your aid. I suppose it's the nature of it that makes the implicit offer so comforting; aid of a friend, not even of an ally or an equal; but a friend._  
  
A wide space separated Kid's words so far from his next ones. "Paragraph break?" Shinichi snickered to himself, tugging another three feet free. As the tape unfurled, small doodles of Kid's trademark caricature began to pepper the text, bearing expressions and props appropriate to the context of the text around them, and Shinichi couldn't help but smile as he encountered the first of them, a romantic-looking Kid caricature, with one disembodied hand holding a small rose for Shinichi's examination.  
  
 _It has been said of me that I was extremely bored as a child, as though my mischief or insanity can be so easily traced to cause. In fact I had no awareness of my childhood; maybe I grew up right along with Kuroba, not knowing myself as thief -- just Magician. I wasn't yet Fool, of course. You're probably not going to be very fond of the bent I'll take in the coming few weeks, or however long this prolonged heist lasts; I can promise you, though, you won't be encountering any more of my more blush-worthy 'talents' -- they're all on indefinite hiatus._  A series of pensive Kids, each studying a small clock face, became increasingly frustrated as Shinichi scrolled the strip sideways and the time on the clock faces did not advance.  
  
 _I am not one to idly bide my time. And so I will drop the masks and the pretenses of Thief, Detective, or Friend._  
  
A small series of caricatures: Kid removing his top hat, staring boldly out of the paper.  
  
 _I've been fighting to keep you from noticing my ledgerdemain. Whether or not you work it out of me when I see you tonight, whether or not I confess it readily, I'll put it on paper here, and hide this and my gift beneath your pillow, because that's just how I do things: wildly, with insanity in the face of caution, in ways that cannot be taken back._  
  
Shinichi pulled free a further length of the paper tape, carefully drawing it free of the pillow. It smelled faintly of something beautiful - probably more of Kid's strange colognes.  
  
 _I confess to holding you...in importance. To valuing you, to exalting you in my worldscheme of talents and great minds. You are exemplary to me._  
  
Another series of caricatures, this series spaced further apart: a slower motion, this time. Through the sequence of drawings, Kid's clothes changed, white uniform to black turtleneck, his street clothes. His monocle was the last piece of his uniform to be removed. The last Kid doodle looked nothing like the Kaitou Kid heist notice caricature that had begun the note; it was just Kid's own representation of himself, portrayed the way that Shinichi often got to see him.  
  
 _I care for Mouri-san deeply, and I will protect your bond with her to the extent of my abilities.  
  
But I thought it would be honest of me to give you this confession, if for no other reason than that I know you can see me, at least to some extent, with eyes of truth. I ask nothing of you other than understanding that I am a man, human as well as myth.  
  
  
Kid._  
  
The end of the paper tape slipped through Shinichi's fingers, following the length before it into a coil on the bedspread. Working on instinct, Shinichi slowly lifted his pillow up. Beneath it, pressed flat by the weight of his head through the night, was one furled bud of a tiny, thornless, orange tea rose.  
  
It was a good five minutes before he moved to pick up the rosebud, and when Shinichi at last did he sat in silence with the small thing in his fingers, unmoving. A phrase kept running over and over through his mind, and dimly, distantly, he recognized it as another Holmes quote:  _'It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.'_  
  
Roses had a more deeply-ingrained symbolism than almost any other flower, even in Japan; red roses for love, white roses for purity, yellow roses for peace, pink ones for elegance... orange ones for admiration, attraction, passion. A rosebud could mean many things in its shape: inception, timelessness, immediacy. A  _thornless orange rosebud_  said--  
  
He swallowed hard, staring at what he held in his damnably small child's hands. --it said something very like what he'd almost said the evening before. The thoughts chased each other back and forth in his head, his own voice and Kid's imagined one, rising from memory and a strip of close-written paper... He hadn't finished the sentence. Had he needed to? Shinichi whispered it out loud now: "People do that... gain a sense of people that they care about." Caring, concern, value.   
  
 _'You are exemplary to me.'_  His own thoughts echoed back with a one-word realization from the Mouris' rooftop, perhaps two weeks past:  _'extraordinary.'_  And the thoughts that had followed after, halfway down a rope-ladder and several stories above the street...  
  
He was handling this very well, wasn't he? Barely breathing, Shinichi closed his eyes and-- let go.  
  
The tiny rosebud was such a small thing; why didn't it shred apart into a hail of petals and green fragments with the storm that was raging around it? It took all the strength in Shinichi's weakened frame to keep from clenching his fist, to keep the fragile bit of symbolism intact as he sat there and shook and allowed himself to  _feel what he'd been feeling_  in carefully locked-away moments: on a futon late at night, on a rooftop, in a dream. Terror played a large part of it; so did longing, so did regret and wonder and (hidden like the tiniest point of light in an iron-clad lockbox) a shocked and secret joy. Recognition, too; he'd felt it all before, every last bit, directed in a very different direction.  
  
Towards Ran.  
  
 _'I care for Mouri-san deeply, and I will protect your bond with her to the extent of my abilities.'_  
  
Towards Ran; and that was still, still there... but so was  _this._  And strangely (or maybe not so strangely), guilt played no part in what he was feeling at all.  
  
The trifle, the rosebud, slid from his fingers; Shinichi caught it before it could hit the floor. With hands that shook only a little he wound the long strip of letter around the bud itself, cocooning a symbol in an expression before he tucked it safely in the pocket of his flannel pajamas. And then he did the only thing that he could do, in that time and in that place: he folded up the terror and longing and regret and wonder and joy, wrapped the emotions tightly around themselves like the petals of something waiting to bloom and hid them away, inside, in the warm dark where they'd be safe.  
  
Because that was what you did with precious things and with secrets until you could let them out.  
  
*  
  
"Toast, tea, plain rice and enough vitamins t'choke a damn horse, Kudo, eat up!" announced Heiji with boneshaking cheer as he came into the room a few minutes later, carrying a lap tray piled with breakfast foods, trailed by Haibara and an anxious Agasa. They'd seen Shinichi's faltering wall-guided progress to the bathroom outside his door a few moments earlier, and there'd been some wrangling as to whether or not someone should have been waiting outside to help. ("Let him set his own limits, Hattori-san," Ai had said practically; "I think he can manage to urinate on his own. Unless you're willing to assist...? I didn't think so.")  
  
Propped up among his pillows, the childlike figure of the Detective of the East looked at the smilyface of jam that had been drawn on his toast, looked up at Heiji, looked back at the toast and sighed. "Good morning to you too, Hattori." Suddenly ravenous, he took a bite and turned the first slice into a one-eyed assault victim.   
  
"Toldja he'd be feeling better." Grinning, the other detective stole the second slice.  
  
"Hold off on that smug," Shinichi warned him around a mouthful of toast. "All I know is I'm vertical - mostly - and hungry. We'll see how long it lasts." Trying not to upset the lap tray's stand, braced to either side of his legs, Shinichi flexed his muscles one at a time, hip to toe, and felt the deadened tingle that meant they were already halfway to numb again, despite that he'd just walked to and from the bathroom on his own power.  
  
"I need to get out of this  _bed,_ " he groused, taking a long drink from his teacup -- and, under Haibara's expectant glare, adding a few pills to his liquid mouthful before swallowing. "I feel like I'm atrophying. No action, nothing to see, nowhere to go..."  _At least my mind's keeping busy,_  he reflected, a bit of gallows humor tingeing the smile that accompanied the thought.  _Though not, probably, on what it_ _should_ _be busy with._    
  
"So, Hattori - what've I missed? With the cows, I mean. What's the situation there? Did you get anything useful at the warehouse in Koto prefecture? Have we confirmed anything about the identity of our pursuers - or their purpose? Has there been another attempt on you? And have you given your father any of the information we've put together so far?"  
  
Hattori's grin, if anything, widened. He tilted the chair back, balancing it on two legs and propping his own on the edge of the bedframe with his arms crossed behind his head. "Ooooh, testy," he teased; there was a smear of jam beside one corner of his mouth. "Maybe this'll be too much for you, maybe I ought to wait 'til you're feelin' better... no? No. Right, after I got a new rental I headed out to take a look around, and..."  
  
*  
  
 _The records office at Hoshi Gyuniku Shipping & Transport was small, cluttered and badly lit; hands in pockets, Hattori Heiji stared down at the old-fashioned filing system and the nervous young clerk that had been assigned by top management to keep him occupied-- that is, to 'assist him in any way possible, of course, Hattori-san, make yourself at home.' Slimy-but-stupid had been his first thought about the businessmen who had met him on his arrival; now he wasn't so sure. "Y'mean to tell me," he said slowly but with a shove behind it, "that you can't find the files showing who signed for that cargo, flight manifests, fuel records or anything else? No inspection records, no weight documents? Nothin'?"  
  
"Nossir." The clerk gulped, waving a hand at one corner of the office's yellowing ceiling, which sported caved-in tiles and spreading rings of soggy brownish damp. "Yomiuri-san said they probably got tossed out, we had this leak in the roof and--"  
  
"Yeah, yeah, heard all about it." Hattori scowled at the soggy debris that occupied that corner of the room. "Real convenient for you."  
  
The staff'd been falling all over themselves to be helpful; they'd shown him the planes, the loaders and unloaders, freezer units, cargo-bays, licenses, et cetera et cetera ad nauseum... and had explained in great detail how they'd lost a full quarter of their records to rain-damage, so sorry, too bad. He'd spent a long morning simultaneously worrying about Kudo and coming to a slow boil over the blatant misdirection and herding he'd experienced under the eye of one Yomiuri Seichiro, a fat, balding man who oozed smiling insincerity with every suggestion he'd made.  
  
But no records equalled no paper-trail and no proof of _ _deliberate_ _involvement; what he needed was a smoking gun--_  
  
*  
  
"--or a smoking inspection permit," Hattori said, munching on his third piece of toast. "Made a few calls from my cell, 'cause places that ship meat in'r'out have to have freezer units, and freezer units break down a lot." He swallowed and continued, crumbs littering his sweatshirt. "There was a sticker on each've the freezer rooms showing when they'd been serviced and the company that did it; I talked t'the guys there and hey, wouldn't you know it, they had records going back nine years on the place, an' every inspection listed the general freezer contents." He smirked. "Nothin' too detailed, but enough t'show shipments of cattle carcasses on a regular basis, quarterly at least. And THAT led me to looking at who does the maintenance on HG's freezer-trucks, and guess what? They had manifests showing where the trucks were worked on, mileage, cargo, general contents... and they've all been comin' and goin' from the same direction: northwest, up by Nagoya."  
  
"And don't tell me, HG's got a contract with a Nagoya company that cans pet food." Shinichi took a small bite of rice, looking thoughtful. "Good idea, going after the maintenance companies; even if HG trashed their records, the other businesses keep theirs-- there's no such thing as a totally wiped paper-trail these days." He yawned. "Sorry. So nobody tried to run you over with a fork-lift or anything?"  
  
Hattori raised an eyebrow. "Not exactly," he drawled, "but close. There was this thing with an escalator..."  
  
*  
  
 _Hoshi Gyuniku's warehouses were located a distance of several blocks from the nearest Beika-bound train station. By the time Hattori had reached it, a dual-level affair with express service to downtown Tokyo and Nagoya, among other destinations, his mind was miles away, dissecting the information he'd acquired for patterns and clues. Yomiuri was trouble, Hattori was sure of that much, but whether he had friends who were also going to be trouble was another question entirely. He had enough time before dinner - well, if he pushed it back a few hours, but this was case time, so a missed meal wasn't much trouble in the scale of things - anyway, he had time to get out to the airport at Nagoya, and maybe even the one of two pet food canneries up that direction, too. He'd have to be tactful in this stage of things - it would send up some major red flags if he bumbled the questioning at the airport - but he could grab a quick lunch at the food court there, and be out of Nagoya city limits and on his way to the Kiti Kusa petfood cannery before twilight.  
  
Hattori stepped onto the escalator, heading down toward the lower level of the station, with his eyes fixed on the sky. Shinichi'd warned him that Kid might have an eye out - and then, despite Hattori's bitching, forcefully reminded him how helpful a backup could be, just in case. Hattori tugged his collar closer to his neck, even though there were no doves visible against the white-blue sky, and grumbled to himself. _Like he needed backup from a guy like--- _  
  
A sudden impact against his right shoulder sent Hattori bouncing into the side rail of the escalator. As the friction dragged his hands upward, he glanced right and down to see who'd shoved past him, but saw no-one. Twisting to the left, Hattori turned backwards on the step, looking up the way he'd come. Nobody there either. He'd just reached up to adjust the bill of his cap, a tingling sense of Not Quite Right putting his nerves on edge, when the scarf around his neck pulled suddenly, constrictingly tight, and Hattori was yanked off his feet.  
  
He landed flat on his back, head facing down the slope of the escalator, one arm twisted at an uncomfortable angle. The ground level came swiftly up to meet him, and the bill of his hat blocked his sight as he tried to look over his head, toward the landing where his assailant was either escaping...or waiting for him. He braced his hands on the sharp, toothed edges of the escalator stairs, intending to use a backflip to regain his footing, but a preliminary tug on his feet, tensing the muscles to prepare the jump, informed him he had bigger problems than the collection of scrapes he had already gathered.  
  
A quick glance toward his sneakers confirmed what Hattori feared - the laces of his shoes were jammed inbetween the stairs of the escalator, tethering his feet against the metal. With a growl, Hattori transformed his pull into a push, seeking to sit up and yank his feet free, with or without his sneakers; it was at that point that his second, more primary problem became apparent.  
  
Hattori had by this point - a scant second or two after his fall - reached the bottom of the escalator, and the back of his head thunked onto the metal catchplate just past the point where the escalator's treads submerged themselves back into the machinery. Rather than being slid along this flat surface, Hattori felt tension growing around his neck, as the ends of his scarf were consumed by the gears and teeth of the escalator. Five feet further down the line, the escalator dragged his feet steadily closer, regardless of the fact that there was increasingly little space for the rest of Hattori, between the two extremes.  
  
Split seconds passed like whole minutes as the catchplate tugged his scarf tighter around his throat, the tension increasing exponentially as his body was forced into a backbend by the captured laces of his sneakers. With an effort, Hattori wrenched one foot free of its shoe, trying to get his fingers around the scarf looped tight around his throat. Around this time, someone nearby started screaming, and as Hattori's vision began to flicker, he idly hoped that whoever brought a knife to cut his scarf away could manage not to catch his jacket collar in the same swipe._  
  
*  
  
Shinichi sat motionless, staring at Hattori with an utterly boggled expression.  
  
"Hattori-kun," Ai dryly interjected, speaking up when it was clear Shinichi could not, "Did it occur to you that this might be the sort of thing that Shinichi would appreciate hearing  _first_?"  
  
Heiji shrugged, raising both eyebrows. "Case first, attempts on my life second. Big deal. I mean, obviously it didn't  _kill me_  or anything," he pointed out cheerfully, "so what's the problem?"  
  
Ai blinked. "I... suppose there isn't one," she conceded. "That's a very practical viewpoint, actually." Behind her, the Professor rolled his eyes at the girl's faintly approving tone.  
  
Hattori swallowed another bite. "Anyway," he said, wiping his mouth, "next thing I know there's this loud screeching goin' on and..."  
  
*  
  
 _At first he'd thought that the noise had been the gears and teeth, protesting as they were clogged with Heiji's scarf; his vision greyed and began taking on a red tinge as the pressure around his neck increased, and the screech began to be drowned out by the pounding in his ears.  
  
Then there was an abrupt jerk, a shove against his chest-- and he was heaving in great gasps of air, the escalator-treads still flattening themselves endlessly beneath his rear and legs as someone held him up from behind, gabbling a torrent of excited and distressed words into his ear that slowly became intelligible as his brain caught up with his breathing:  
  
"...SAID are you ALRIGHT, young man? --Noyen, could you please be a dear and call an ambulance? I don't think he's well at all." The voice carried the frailness of age in its agitated tones but was surprisingly rich; still leaning back into the hands that supported him, Heiji slowly turned his head.  
  
A thin, worried old woman's face looked at him anxiously; it was her hands, the nails a vivid and startlingly youthful red, that had been supporting him. She knelt almost primly on the escalator platform; her black hair was carefully coifed and curled (a wig, said the detective that lived inside Heiji's head) and her wrinkled face was an advertisement for the makeup artist's art. "_ _There_ _you are," she cooed, a delighted smile spreading across her tinted lips. "Noyen, the poor thing's awake-- can you stand up, young man? Of course you can, can't you? Noyen, darling, give the lad a hand, he's getting all dusty lying there on the floor." This last was to an elderly man, obviously a manservant of some kind; he helped Heiji to his feet, steadied him as the milling crowd around them began to disperse now that the show was over.  
  
Wrinkled hands brushed him off, both those of the old man and the elderly woman; as he massaged his abused throat, Heiji could make out two uniformed figures on the next level up with Security Guard written all over them making their way purposefully towards the top of the escalator. "M--" (coughcough) "Much obliged, Obaasan," he said with difficulty; "I really appreciate the help." From around his neck Heiji fished out the ruined, chewed-up scrap that was all that remained of his scarf and looked at it ruefully.  
  
Obaasan sparkled at him, twitching off a bit of dust that still clung to his shirt with a wrinkled hand; she was very well dressed and her lined face was vivacious and quite lively despite her obvious age. "It was nothing, my dear; we were right there and we saw you choking, and Noyen had this little pair of scissors in his pocket-- in case of loose threads, you know, or that sort of thing. Isn't that right, Noyen?"  
  
"Yes, Madam. One never knows when a sewing kit might be needed."  
  
The security guards were examining the escalator controls at the top; ignoring them, the elderly woman continued. "And we couldn't just leave you there, hm?" She looked him over thoughtfully. "You need a cup of tea," she decided, "or perhaps a bit of brandy. Come to think of it, so do I, so let's be going before those dreary guards reach us, shall we?"  
  
"....what?"  
  
"Darling," and her artfully made-up black eyes flashed impatience at him, "we can stay here and fill out a great deal of boring paperwork or," and she patted his arm, "you can accompany me to a nice little restaurant that I know of nearby. It's not every day, after all," she added with a mischievous little smile, "that a handsome young man flings himself at my feet. Or not lately, in any case."_  
  
*  
  
"So... what'd you do?"  
  
"Took her and that Noyen guy out t'dinner," Hattori said practically. "On Oyaji's credit-card. I mean, wasn't like whoever'd shoved me down was still around, were they? And she damn near dragged me, Kudo, I swear."   
  
Shinichi eyed him dubiously. "And she was  _how_  old?"  
  
"Hell, how would I know? Eighties, at least. Must've been pretty hot when she was younger, though, and..." He scratched the back of his head, looking sheepish. "She kept callin' me  _darling_  and  _sweetheart_  and  _dear boy._  Thought she was gonna pinch me on the ass when I left; turns out she's some sort of zaibatsu family head, name of Kikoman. You know? Like the soy sauce? Anyway, I..... Kudo? Kudo, why're you laughing?"  
  
"No...No reason at all, Hattori," Shinichi managed, between chuckles that steadily grew stronger as the synchronicity of the situation boggled him. "Please tell me you gave her your card."  
  
"I ain't stupid," Hattori grinned. "Made sure Noyen put it away safe and everything. I was thinkin' I could maybe use her...or her connections, at least."  
  
Shinchi raised one eyebrow carefully. "I wouldn't try that too boldly, Heiji. She's more likely to twist  _you_  around. And get unholy pissed off if she catches you trying to use her, anyway. She's actually..." He drifted into silence, thinking of the note-wrapped rose in his pocket.  
  
"I met Kid because of her," he admitted after a moment, noting - but not focusing on - Haibara's startled eyes. Instead he held Heiji's as he continued, his tone reserved.  
  
"He got mad at me for using him as part of my plan to protect Kikoman-sama's Amber Wing. He acted as the 'safe,' keeping the Wing away from her son while exposing the son as an attempted thief; but he found out that I'd been planning to lose to him from the start. Basically, that it was a fixed game from the start." Shinichi winced, remembering the clack of the card gun's hammer drawing back, the ice in Kaitou Kid's tone in Mouri's unlit hallway.  
  
"He didn't take it well."  
  
Heiji frowned, scratching his hairline. "I thought you'd been going to heists for a while," he said, carefully withholding implications or implicit criticisms from his words. Just surface meaning, that was all.  
  
Shinichi shook his head lightly, touching the side of his thigh just a bit down from his hip. An itch, maybe? The small detective's face was pensive as he clarified.  
  
"No, I wasn't clear. I've been going to  _Kaitou Kid_  heists for a while now, but what I meant was after this one, I met  _Kid_. He took the Kikoman case as a personal attack, and the next five or six heists were actually just the means to sending me a message about that. Which he ended up having to explain to me anyway, at the end of that week. We...ended up talking. And this whole..." He waved one hand, not trusting himself with words on this particular point, and Hattori nodded, understanding the gesture.  
  
"So that's where ya got started with him," he said. "I guess it makes a little bit more sense. ...Maybe."  
  
The boy hiked one shoulder up in a half-shrug. "A lot of things make more sense to me now. I wish-- there're things I'd like to tell you, things I think'd make a difference if you understood them, but--" He sighed. "Secrets. I can't betray Kid's confidences any more than," Shinichi hesitated, "any more than you'd betray  _mine."_  
  
Heiji was silent for a moment, eyes shuttered in thought; Shinichi poked at his rice, which had gone cold, and wondered what was going through the other detective's mind. "What's he like?" asked Heiji abruptly.  
  
 _Like?_  Shinichi very carefully laid his chopsticks down as he riffled through the first half-dozen or so answers that occurred to him. "...you never ask the easy ones, do you, Hattori? He's... unpredictable, except that he never takes the easy way out of anything. Terrifyingly intelligent. Totally ruthless when it comes to expecting  _other people--_  --me-- to match wits with him, if they act like they think they can. Paranoid as hell, with good reason. He's-- so far outside the box,  _any_  box..." Shinichi hesitated, staring down at the tray in front of him. "He hates being taken advantage of but he'll go to ridiculous lengths to help somebody out just because he thinks he should," he said at last; a memory welled up: broken crockery and a moment of vulnerability for them both. "And he understands what it's like to be isolated, almost too well."  
  
Heiji studied him soberly. "Y'sure you're talking about him, Kudo? Or you?"  
  
Shinichi shook his head; there really wasn't any kind of answer he could give to that.  
  
Hattori was quiet for a moment. "...Okay then. So, uh, I didn't end up getting out to Kiti Kusa. But I did head up to Nagoya anyway, scouted the airport a little. It was too late t' really get anything done but I did talk to the guy at the security gate. Got a little bit of info 'bout who works when. I have a couple names, and I know one of 'em's been there for a few years and the other one has been there a good twenty, thirty years probably - guy I talked to was a newbie but I kind of read what he meant..." He stopped, looking sheepish. "Uh. Anyway, I got a  _little_  info. Figure I can go up tomorrow night, 'round two or so, when the old-timer's working, and get some more done."  
  
Shinichi looked wistful; the expression turned him momentarily into the child he wasn't. "Wish I could go with you," he said a little sadly; he shifted, rubbing at the ache which seemed to be traveling up the side of his body. "Not going to happen for a few days, though, at least." Shinichi kicked irritably at the covers, making the tray on its wobbly legs rattle; he relaxed back against the pillows, face wan. Ai and Agasa, who'd been conferring just beyond the doorway in low voices, turned as one to look at Shinichi.  
  
Ai shook her head, a warning expression on her face. "Push it, Kudo-kun, and you'll double your recuperation period. You need rest." She gave Heiji a significant stare, and he stood up hastily.  
  
"Yeah, yeah, got it." He gave the covers a self-conscious pat. "Get some rest, willya? I gotta meet Oyaji for lunch." He made a sour face; "He's still harping on my joining the force the fast'n easy way. If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times, and it's really gettin' old." Ai cleared her throat meaningfully and Heiji held up his hands. "Right. Going! Seeya later, Kudo." He shuffled out of the room, moving past Ai with exaggerated care.  
  
The blonde picked up the tray, looking over her patient carefully. "Rest, nutrients and more rest," she pronounced. "Well?"  
  
Shinichi sighed. "I don't have to be  _happy_  about it." He slumped back into his pillows, crossing his arms. "There's too much still to discover about this case. Heiji could be in the hospital if the timing had been a minute different or if they had less of a flair for the dramatic. And we still don't even know what these people  _want_ , much less who "they" are! As if two shadow organizations weren't bad enough, we now have a nice  _simple_  case of corporate ethics and greed, on an international level," Shinichi ranted, his tone showing his disdain. "And now they're gunning for us. And I'm  _still stuck here._ "  
  
"If you're stuck here," she pointed out, "they can't 'gun for you'. And if you're safe, you can recuperate. And when you've recuperated, you can get back to work. Simple enough, correct? There's really only one question left that requires an answer."  
  
Tiredness washing over him, Shinichi paused in mid-bad-mood. "What?"  
  
"I can sedate you to make you rest, or you can do it voluntarily. Which shall it be?"  
  
Shinichi didn't even blink. "Sedate me. Preferably for long enough that when I wake up again, I will be able to walk straight out of bed and back onto the case."  
  
That brought Ai up short, for once; she stopped in the doorway, mouth open. "....I was  _joking,_  Kudo-kun. But you do need rest; allowing your muscles to atrophy even more won't speed up your healing." She vanished around the corner with his tray. Still lingering just outside the bedroom, the Professor shook his head.  
  
"Shinichi-kun, I realize that you're impatient, but..." He took the chair that Heiji had vacated; it creaked as it accepted his considerable weight. "And there are other, hrrm, things to consider." The boy frowned, recalling what Heiji had said earlier.  
  
"...Flashbacks."  
  
"Yes. Not something we'd expected, but, well." The scientist sighed and leaned forward. "Shinichi," he said seriously, all humor gone from his bushy-eyebrowed face, "this is a serious matter. Neither Ai-chan nor myself had any idea that this would happen, I promise you." He studied the boy's face. "We've postulated that several things might set the reaction off-- extreme weariness, a drop in blood-sugar, injury-- your white-cell count is currently unstable and has been climbing; an increase beyond a significant point and..." He waggled his fingers in the air, bringing them from waist-height up towards his shoulder and above.  
  
"How fast do you think it would be?" Shinichi frowned. "As bad as this last time?"  
  
"We have no way to know, Shinichi," Agasa reiterated. "This wasn't at all something that we'd planned for. Even after you recover, it may not be safe to let you leave the house until we--"  
  
Shinichi gave gave him a flat stare that stomped the end of that sentence into the ground. "Unless you want me to lose my sanity along with my health, I am going to _HAVE_  to get out of here. I can't put my life on hold just because--"  
  
"--because there's a chance you'll transform in public? Shinichi-kun..." Agasa scowled beneath his moustache. "Have you considered what it would be like for you if you were, say, to transform while at Mouri-san's? In your sleep, for instance?"  
  
The awful prospect of waking up on his futon, fully transformed and wearing the tattered shreds of his pajamas and  _absolutely nothing else_  beneath Mouri's wrathful and homicidal gaze was enough to bring Shinichi's increasing frustration to a skidding halt. "Um. So. Are there any warning signs I could keep an eye out for?" he asked faintly, shrinking back against the pillows. There was a feeling in his gut, something near to trembling, that told him he was nearing the end of his resources and reallywould need to rest soon.  
  
"I believe Ai-kun was explicitly clear on what our limitations are when it comes to this issue, Shinichi-kun. We don't know why your system is reacting more poorly to this transformation, even though it was better prepared, and we don't know how to stabilise it, or how long it will take if we simply wait for it, either. I'm sorry to have so much bad news for you, Shinichi-kun, but this is the cost of getting to see Ran in your real body. We didn't know you would have to pay it, but that's how it is."  
  
Agasa stood, bracing his palms on his knees as he rose, and smoothed the blanket at Shinichi's hip with an apologetic expression. "You just have to bear it a little longer. ...I'll let you rest. Hattori-kun will surely be in before he leaves for the day. And Ran-chan will come over right after school. Ai-chan will be in the living room if you need anything. I'm going upstairs for a while."  
  
 _Wonderful._  
  
Left alone at last in the quiet of a room he was getting increasingly tired of, Shinichi deflated among his covers, sliding down and pulling the sheet up to his chin. He stared down the expanse of his bed to where his toes made depressingly-small lumps beneath the blanket and tried to imagine them larger and further away, adult-sized again. It was both an easy thing and a difficult thing-- easy to recall both in sight and sensation, and difficult because it carried with it the memory of pain. Waiting-- wondering if he'd end the day in the same size he'd began it in-- it was like carrying a ticking time-bomb around inside his body.  
  
And the worst of it?  
  
He  _wanted_  the change. Wanted the transformation, wanted the chance to turn back even for a little while. Restlessly Shinichi turned on his side, pulling the covers up to nose-level and closing his eyes as fatigue washed over him in a dizzying wave. It was a little like craving a drug (something that would make him cringe with irony if it wasn't so damn sad), and if it happened, he knew perfectly well he'd welcome the effects while they lasted.  
  
...though not the cause.  _That,_  he didn't want to think too hard about.  
  
Huddling beneath the blankets, he allowed sleep to drag him down.  
  
*  
  
"Shinichi? Shiniiiichi, wake up." A gentle hand on his shoulder, a gentle voice, brought Shinichi back to a room lit low by electric lights. The window was dark and the clock confirmed the hour.  
  
"Ran? Hey..." Wiping sleep from his eyes with one fist, Shinichi curled his other hand around Ran's, anchoring his pull against her strength to pull himself upright. "Everything okay?"  
  
From her seat on the bed's edge beside him, Ran stroked Shinichi's bangs back from his eyes, smiling. "Everything's fine. I stayed here to do my homework after classes, and Hattori-kun came back from his research a few hours later, with some things about the case. Tousan tagged along, he said he wants to take me home." She put on a masculine tone. "'I haven't seen my daughter in--'" She laughed. "He just wants me to cook for him. Either way, I'll have to sleep at home tonight, just to pacify him. I didn't want to wake you just to tell you that, so I let you sleep through dinner."  
  
"Dunno if I would have been hungry anyway," Shinichi yawned, stretching a little with Ran's support. "We did eat when you came home, anyway." He pulled a face. "...That was today, right?"  
  
"It was," Ran reassured him. "And also today was Heiji telling us about getting eaten by the escalator, and Heiji talking to his father about the case, and Heiji bringing his father over to talk with you about what you've discovered so far, to share knowledge!"  
  
Shinichi had about three seconds to process that before Ran was tugging him forward, pulling the blankets from his legs. "If you hurry you can get cleaned up before everyone gets settled in the living room."  
  
It took a little longer than expected; sleep-drugged and very wobbly on his feet, Shinichi managed to get himself into some semblance of order, wrap himself in a bathrobe, find his long-abandoned glasses and his equally discarded Conan-Face before being helped down the hall to where a gabble of voices were making Agasa's house much louder than the norm. Leaning on Ran (she'd offered a little mischievously to carry him in; he'd declined with dignity), Shinichi--  _Conan_ \-- paused as the voices in the room abruptly paused and far too many eyes swung towards him.  
  
Agasa, Mouri, Ai, Heiji... and 'Oni' Hattori Heizo himself, who had paused in mid-sentence to blink at Conan's shaky entrance. A look of relief flitted across the man's stern face, giving him the faintest resemblance to his son (or the other way around) for just a moment; Heiji really resembled his mother in most respects. "Good to see you, bozu," he rumbled gruffly, nodding as Conan was settled comfortably on the couch beside Ran; the boy nodded politely back, relieved that even in this company it wouldn't seem all that weird if he leaned against his 'guardian' for comfort.  
  
Ran's hand smoothed his hair; he accepted a cup of something that probably wasn't... no; it wasn't coffee or even tea, it was hot milk, and he gave Ai a slightly betrayed look which she returned blandly. "Hi, Heiji-niisan," he chirped. "So what did you find out?"  
  
"We know a lot of things," Heiji's father began, drawing the attention of all in the room. He was known for being brusque and all business, so his tone came as no surprise to his audience. With a small nod, his son deferred to him, handing over the lead of the conversation.  
  
"We know we're dealing with an international arrangement," Heizo began, "And we have concrete evidence, from Heiji's research in Koto, that Hoshi Gyuniku has been receiving shipments at Chofu, instead of Narita, in a pattern which aligns with this most recent shipment." He shuffled through a small stack of papers, some with smaller notes paperclipped to them, brow drawing down in focus. "The body parts found within have been sorted in four ways. First, by length of time frozen. This method showed us that after being frozen in batches, the parts were scrambled and distributed between the cows. Secondly, by genetically matching like parts to like. This method showed which parts originally came from the same persons - and that except for the children, the victims were not family members of each other. Thirdly, by amount of tissue decay. This showed us that all the parts were frozen very soon after death, preventing most progression of rot and decay. Fourth, we sorted the parts by damage due to freezing. None of the parts showed significant evidence of repeated cell wall rupture - which means that they were likely frozen once, directly after death, and have remained frozen since that time."  
  
Heizo turned his attention to Mouri, who cleared his throat and picked up the thread of explanation. "The four sets of data show that, within the sets of body parts which were taken from each person, decay before freezing and damage due to length of time frozen are comparable. This means that our victims' parts were all frozen together, which rules out the possibility of torture or dismemberment in stages. The selection of body parts also indicates a particular purpose." The Sleeping Detective (who was, at least for the moment, in one of his regrettably-rare serious moods) drew his brows together with a black look. "No torsos mean no major organs; a lack of hearts, livers, et cetera, and the removal of eyes from the few heads we've found mean..." He cleared his throat uncomfortably.  
  
"An organ farm. Isn't that right, Heiji-niisan? That's what you said." Conan's voice was still childish but as serious as the adult faces around him; Heizo blinked, his eyes widening briefly before he recovered-- he  _had_  been around the boy a few times in the past, but it still wasn't all that easy for even a senior officer to accept the 'child's' clinical outlook. "And the feet and hands come mostly from really poor people, and the teeth too." He sat up a little, glancing inquiringly at Hattori. "And... you told me something about the tattoos..." Nudge, nudge, c'mon, Heiji, your turn.  
  
The younger Hattori returned the look, deliberately reaching across and tousling the boy's hair (who resisted the impulse to bite. Just.) "That's right, bozu, the tattoos. Chirokawa-san figured 'em out first, he saw a gang connection; I followed up on it and... Oyaji? You know anybody in Guatemala?"  
  
His father raised a heavy eyebrow. "The Mala gang connection, yes; I passed along what you told me and began an inquiry." Oni Heizo's eyes took on a gleam that past perpetrators had come to fear with a bone-deep dread. "We received a report early this morning via Interpol, actually-- your suspicions were right, the head in question belonged to a former gang-member who vanished while seeking work two months ago in Cobán. His girlfriend filed a missing person's report; we've verified that he'd been undergoing some fairly primitive tattoo-removal excisement as well over the past year, so--" Heizo made an abrupt motion with one hand that laid any question of identity to rest. "The other body parts, in general, belong to similar genotypes as far as the M.E.'s office has been able to determine... with the exception of one adult male."  
  
Mouri grunted, picking up one of the papers he'd brought in with him. "'Mid-forties, Asian, very possibly Japanese per bone-structure and dental techniques used,' blah blah blah; they found his head and a couple of hands." He flipped the paper over, clearing his throat as he read aloud again. "'Extremities show little callus or intense muscular development. Minor indications of carpal-tunnel syndrome on the right wrist.' Paper-pusher of some sort, probably, who saw something he shouldn't've. Maybe even a tourist."  
  
Conan scowled at that, then schooled his expression into something more innocent and inquisitive. "Ne, Ojisan, how long ago was he frozen?"  
  
"Eh?"  
  
"Well, if he wasn't frozen a long time, then maybe something went wrong? I mean, recently? And they killed him and froze him because they were in a hurry to hide him?" Conan pulled his bathrobe around him a little tighter; beside him, Ran shifted, her arm sliding down to rest on his thin shoulders. "So maybe he's just been reported missing, or not too long ago. It's something, isn't it?"  
  
Across from him,  _both_  of Heizo's eyebrows were up; he eyed the boy on the couch with disturbingly sharp, black eyes. "Hm. Back to Chirokawa-san again. S'pose I'll have to have a talk with the man; we haven't met yet."  
  
"Call ahead," his son advised him, white teeth gleaming. "And be sure'n wear a clean shirt."  
  
Heizo met his son's eyes, measured his seriousness, and harumphed. "Noted. If your suspicions are correct, bozu, then Missing Persons will have information on a Japanese citizen, middle forties, who matches the remnants that we have in our custody. He may become the link that takes us back to Hoshi Gyuniku."  
  
"And Kiti Kusa!" Conan chirped, drawing a smack from Heiji and the intense attention of Heizo and Mouri both.  
  
"What was that, boyo?" Mouri grumbled, one eyebrow hiked high. "What're you babbling about?"  
  
"Oh, nothing, nothing, I think he's just tired," Heiji interjected, ruffling Conan's hair with enough force to push his head down an inch or two. "Isn't that right, kid?"  
  
"Petfood!" Conan replied. "Kiti Kusa makes petfood. Heiji-niichan was going to talk to the people there to ask if they know the people at the beef company."  
  
Heizo swung his focus over to his son, and Heiji met it evenly. "Kid's right," he offered, in response to the unasked question. "I was going to ask around at Kiti Kusa, up near Chofu, but I got sidetracked and didn't get there today."  
  
Heizo's eyes narrowed. "What were you hoping to find there? And why didn't you mention this to me?"  
  
"No proof yet," Heiji grumbled. "But there's a theory - the kid helped think it up, actually." The barest of pauses passed while Conan and Ran recognized the double entendre, and then Heiji was continuing his explanation. "They gotta get rid of these parts somehow, right? We haven't had any reports of Guatemalan Mala bits showing up in the gutters. So where's it going? Somewhere that it wouldn't get questioned."  
  
"The beef isn't nice beef," Conan explained, picking up the thread. "Ran-neechan and Kaasan always buy the nice beef, with all the marbled fat in it. But this beef was tough and not marbled at all."  
  
"It was frozen, too," Heiji added. "An' before you tell me I'm pointing out the obvious, remember mosta the beef that comes into the country's chilled, not froze, cause sukiyaki and stuff makes better with chilled beef instead of frozen. But it's not been just this shipment, either."  
  
Heizo nodded, beginning to see the shape of what his son was describing. "Fifteen years of shipments through Chofu," he murmured. "Your theory would state the purpose of the beef is...?"  
  
"Beef  _and_  its cargo," Heiji clarified. "That's where I think Kiti Kusa comes in, but I don't have proof yet. There's two petfood canneries up in Chofu, but my guesses take me to this one, based on the information I got from the company that repairs Hoshi Gyuniku's freezers and freezer trucks."  
  
Heizo nodded. "We'll pursue that line of investigation further, using the power of the police department. Good work, Heiji." Heiji sat up straighter, fighting to hide how pleased the praise made him. Ran stepped in to move the conversation along, hiding her  _own_  smile as she felt Conan tense under her hand, thrilled for Heiji's sake by Heizo's praise.  
  
"What about the Guatemalan organ farm?" All eyes turned to her, even Conan's, and Ran simply squeezed Conan's shoulder lightly as she met her father's and Heizo's eyes. "How did the Japanese man come back to Japan in pieces? If he hasn't been...damaged, by not being frozen right away, then he would have had to be frozen  _in_  Guatemala, wouldn't he? And so why did he go there? They wouldn't kidnap him and take him there just to kill him if he was troublesome to them, they would kill him right away, here, wouldn't they? So did he go to Guatemala on his own?"  
  
"Guatemala isn't the biggest tourist trap for Japanese travelers," Heiji added. "But a lotta companies send guys to check on their supply chain's outsource locations, especially when they're supplies that you can't make in Japan."  
  
The pause that followed was of mixed caliber. Ran and Heiji waited, Mouri seemed to have just reached a breakthrough, and Conan and Heizo's eyes narrowed. Heizo was the first to speak.  
  
"That had occurred to us as well, Mouri-san," he said hesitantly. "And as we do not want to publicize the fact that we have sufficient information to make that leap, much less take steps toward confirming it, I hope you can understand that that detail, even more so than the rest of what we've discussed tonight, must be held in _strictest_  confidence." He glanced at Conan, measuring the boy; Conan looked back, expression serious.  
  
"Regardless," Heizo continued finally, collecting his materials into a neat stack between both big hands, "from here, the investigation will be a joint effort between Japanese authorities and the resources of Interpol. Tonight's meeting has been helpful - we now know that all our knowledge is pooled, and the extra information that Heiji has discovered will guide my officers, and Chiaki-keibu's, as we proceed."  
  
Clearing his throat, Heizo stood. Heiji, Mouri, and Agasa popped up from their seats as well, in respect. "From this point on, I have to ask that none of you investigate further into this case," Heizo instructed them. "We are entering a delicate period of the work, and the case will best be handled by my officers. This goes  _double_  for you, Heiji," he added, aiming a strict glare in his son's direction. "One attempt on your life is enough."  
  
"A-ah, hai, hai," Hattori stammered. "Not to worry, Oyaji."  
  
With a few brusque goodbyes, and only after extracting expansive promises from both their offspring to be  _careful, dammit,_ , Heizo and Mouri left.  
  
When the door was safely closed, everyone remaining held their peace for a few long seconds, waiting until the engine rumble in front of the house assured them that the detective and the inspector were well on their way. Then all heads pivoted toward Hattori. Ai said what everyone else was thinking.  
  
"Only  _one_  attempt on your life, Hattori-kun?"  
  
Heiji sighed, pushing back his hat and scratching the head beneath it. "I didn't see whoever pushed me, not one damn glimpse. Can't  _prove_  it wasn't some stupid thug just havin' his idea of a good time. And no, I don't think it was either, but-- and why do it, anyway? What would killin' me accomplish?"  
  
"...aside from making this world a quieter place?  _Distraction,"_  Ai responded dryly, arms crossed.   
  
Conan-- Shinichi-- nodded, pushing himself a little more upright in the curve of Ran's arm. "The first attempt took place directly following our run-in with the news reporters; you have a famous father, also involved in the case and capable of bringing in elements of international law. That's the greatest danger right there, the fact that the pursuit of the culprits has the potential of passing Japanese borders and involving extradition; and therefore, the most dangerous person to our criminal or criminals would be your father."  
  
Beside him, Ran bit her lip. "Killing you before he got involved with international contacts might... buy time for the criminals to get away. It does make sense." She shivered.  
  
Across from her, though, Hattori Heiji was visibly swelling up in a storm of wrath equal to anything his famous father had ever presented. "My getting splattered all over the landscape under some goddamned car's wheels or strangled by a frickin' escalator was  _just a diversion?!?_ " He went on about this for several minutes, using certain choice words and phrases that he'd been apparently saving for just such an occasion; trading looks between them, his audience allowed the tirade to run its course before Agasa at last stepped in.  
  
"Mah, mah, Hattori-kun, I'm sure they were intending for you to fall down the escalator and break your neck, not be strangled by it." He waved soothing hands in the air; Shinichi made a muffled noise and covered his eyes.  
  
"--an' that's supposed to make me feel  _BETTER?"_  
  
"Errhm." The Professor blinked. "I'll, err, I'll just... go fetch us all something to drink, shall I?" Moving quickly for a man of his age and bulk, Agasa retreated into the kitchen.  
  
Hattori glared at Agasa's back as he made his retreat, and Ai, nearest to him, snickered quietly as Hattori fought the urge to growl. "Why the rage, Hattori-kun? Shouldn't you be vindicated that your enemy in this case is clearly of an intellectual level sufficient to give you proper chase?"  
  
"No," Hattori snarled, taking his nicely simmering sulk with him as he stole Agasa's armchair and curled up petulantly in it. "Cause it's not mine to chase anymore - you heard what my old man said. And don't think for a second that I want to just let it go, but think about what'd happen if I don't, and the crooks catch me catchin' them? Any evidence I could provide 'bout what I saw would at the best get to be registered as a civilian witness's testimony. And while the cops tried to catch up with me to see what I saw, the crooks'd be out the door with their cows and their passports. I can help best at this point by sitting the hell still, and that sucks."  
  
"You have my sympathies," Shinichi offered, his tone dry as dust. "I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to sit around doing  _nothing_  all day....ow! Oi,  _Ran!_ "  
  
Smiling angelically, Ran tweaked Shinichi's ear again, immune to his glare. "All uses of sarcasm aside, I think the best thing to do would be to decide what we can do with you two now. If you're both off the case now, we need to figure out something to keep you busy so you don't go crazy. And Hattori-kun, you can't go home yet; going on the train for that long by yourself wouldn't be safe, I think, with your father still on his case. You're still a...um..." She pulled up short of saying it, but Hattori rolled his eyes anyway.  
  
"Distraction, I know."  
  
* * * * *

 


	20. "Arpeggio, Shoujo Tantei, yakitori"

The rest of the evening passed very quietly; exhausted by the activity and even the little exertion he'd managed, Shinichi ate a few mouthfuls, downed Ai's ever-present assortment of nutrient and vitamin pills and went back to bed without protest. He was vaguely aware of the others talking beyond his door, but the leaden fatigue and aches that dragged at his limbs pulled him under without a ripple, and when he surfaced again the house was dark and silent.  
  
The clock told him that everyone had long since gone their respective ways to bed-- Heiji and Ran back to the Mouri residence, Agasa and Ai to their own rooms. Nothing disturbed the peace of the late hour, and as Shinichi reached slowly out to turn on his small bedside lamp, his own movements and the click of the switch sounded like muted thunder.  
  
With that inconvenient derangement of time that a sick person so often gets, he felt strangely wakeful; everything ached, especially the long bones and joints of thigh and hip (which made sense, if his white-cell count was going weird on him-- the largest concentration of bone-marrow produced the largest quantity) and his skin felt twitchy, over-sensitized. Restless but unwilling to wake anyone, he looked around a little desperately for something to do.  
  
There were still several books piled within reach; for a few moments he contemplated the usual cure for insomnia, reading until your eyes were tired enough to shut; but then Shinichi's glance strayed towards his laptop, charged and resting close enough to grab if he just stretched a bit... Cursing his own weakness and the unreliability of his muscles, it took the boy three attempts to get the thing in place; but as flipped the lid open, a shooting pain in his hip made him wince and rub the offending joint.   
  
There was something in his pocket--  
  
 _Oh._  
  
It had been there all evening, like a talisman. Like the coral-bells-and-clover charm in his wallet and the notes he'd stashed quietly away... and like the little datebook he'd shown to Ran not all that long ago, with certain days circled in red. Things of importance, things conveying messages-- Blindly he unrolled the narrow scroll of paper, fingertips sliding across text and caricatures as if their meaning would seep through his skin if he touched them enough. The grand finale of the orange rosebud (now browning with his body-heat and the pressure of being hauled around in a pocket) slipped out into Shinichi's lap at the end and lay there like the secret it was.   
  
Kid hadn't asked for an answer; he hadn't even hinted at wanting one. It'd be so much easier not to answer, wouldn't it? There was a comfort in keeping silent; and yet the very existance of the letter seemed to demand a response.  
  
Shinichi swallowed hard against the sudden dryness of his throat. How could he-- what...  
  
...could he even say?  
  
 _I have Ran, I can't--  
  
If I could, I--  
  
She hasn't said a word. She went after him for me, did she realize, did she know...? She hasn't asked but she's GOT to-- even Heiji almost--_ His jumbled thoughts tripped over each other, tangling their feet and doing nothing but stumbling around in circles.  _I can't screw this up, I have to get it_ _right_ _, oh God I can't, I won't, please don't let me have hurt Ran, she's already been hurt enough...  
  
But so have I. And I promised I'd tell him the truth, wouldn't lie. I promised Ran the same thing. I _ _promised_ _._  
  
 _It's not a question of, of-- I don't have a problem with-- I just_ _don't_ _. I've never understood it before or seen the attraction, but... I've never looked the other way, either. Never thought about it a lot, but when I did, I... wondered. There was always Ran when there was anybody; but I guess if anyone understands that things change, it's me. The timing sure sucks, though, doesn't it? And I guess it's not, not a change so much as an explanation. An addition, not a subtraction. Nothing lost. Nothing lost._  The fleeting thought ran through Shinichi's mind that, in a way, he should've been grateful for the distractions of weakness and illness; otherwise, despite, well... everything... he'd probably be dying out of sheer embarrassment.  
  
 _God, Kid. The things you've put me through. The things_ _I've_ _put you through. And Ran-- not an afterthought, never, not a second choice or an instead-of or, or anything else like that; a pivot-point, if anything. I can't lose her, I can't.  
  
...and maybe, just _ _maybe_ _, I won't have to._  His fingers slid across the line towards the last section, beyond the tiny filmstrip of Kid's transformation from Phantom Thief to man. Kid had given him his truth; Shinichi'd given Ran the same thing. And Ran... had always, even when she protested it, given him the truth too: the thing he'd valued the most. And last of all, Kid had promised to protect that gift, that bond.  
  
So-- confronted with that strange, unasked-for generosity, what right did he have to keep his comfortable silence? Shinichi stared at the thin, curling strip of paper as he ran it absentmindedly through his fingers, over and over. He could just pick up a trace of rose-scent rising up from the warm, bruised petals in his lap, and unbidden the image of Kid's first caricature in the letter came to mind, the one that had made him smile.  
  
Long minutes passed before the boy moved at last, and when he did there was a certainty in his actions that hadn't been there before:  _this is what I'm going to do, this is how I'll do it, this is what will result from my actions._  The glow of his laptop spilled across the covers after a few seconds, one finger hastily muting the sound as it booted up. A few moments later he'd found the links he needed, and Shinichi clicked on the bookmark that took him to the [Welcome Holmes](http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WelcomeHolmes/) website.  
  
Two minutes later he sat staring at the [pair](http://www.physorg.com/news175244442.html) of [links](http://www.paintingmania.com/branches-almond-blossom-6_2867.html) he'd loaded into the simple private message; they glowed back at him, blue text on white, innocuous and innocent, and he wondered what Kid's reaction would've been if he'd only sent the [first](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_rose) and not the [second](http://www.arenaflowers.com/facts/flowers/flower_meanings/almonds_flowers). Swallowing against the hard knot that had found a place somewhere in his throat, Shinichi hit the enter key before he could have second thoughts... and then sat back, wondering just what he had done.  
  
 _Guess I've taken a leaf from Kid's book-- how did he put it? 'Wildly, with insanity in the face of caution, in ways that cannot be taken back.' That pretty much sums it up in a nutshell, which is really an appropriate way to put it. After that... I'll need to talk to Ran. But not tonight._  Weariness and a sudden, strong craving for sleep dragged at his hands, fingers fumbling as they shut down the laptop and laid it aside; for some reason he found himself stowing the rosebud and its letter inside the laptop's hinged fold, fitting it narrowly within the thin space between the bottom of the screen and the top of the keys as if trying to press the thing inside a book. It was, Shinichi supposed, a better place to hide it than his pajama-pocket.  
  
 _And now,_  he thought silently to himself as he turned out the light,  _we'll see what happens. Kid took a gamble on me; now it's my turn. Please, please, let me get this one right._  
  
Shinichi slept.  
  
* * * * *  
  
One two three four one two three four one two three four...  
  
[Arpeggio.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIrJ4oJI1qs)  
  
Slim fingers slithered down the keys smoothly, fingertips drifting up from the glassy ivories with deliberate, thoughtless precision. The piano seemed to sigh on every beat - his left hand kept steady, slow rhythm, the weighted, contemplative chords coming to rest one at a time. Gently, his right joined in; the piano seemed to whimsically consider each note as his fingers sought the keys steadily. Deft touch, light touch, steady touch, and even as each played, his fingers lifted up again, on to the next note, the next heist, unfalteringly.  
  
What would she say--  
  
What would she think he'd say  
  
The words fell one to a note, each a single tone, a single thought. No images accompanied them; his eyes were closed but he saw the keys, saw the blacks and whites. No greys. His wrist lifted, turned; sweeping his fingers along behind it, on to the next notes. They touched down like ghosts, soft touch with the hard line of his fingernails, clipped close, carefully pointing straight down, wrists strong, knuckles high. Perfect poise. His fingertips compressed to the keys; the tips of his nails drew within a hair's breadth of clicking against the ivory and muddying the sound; the note played, they were lifted again, away to the next, cleanly rising away from black and white together, catching a passing glimpse of the piano's face, no sheets of music in its rack, as they passed.  
  
One two three four one two three four one two three  
  
His hand walked the scales, thumb and pinkie spread, dancing across their surfaces like a waterbug, barely breaking the surface. His face -- his mask -- was a smooth, clear pond. Adding forte to some notes now, emphasis and insistence:  
  
One two three one two three two three two three what--  
  
would--  
  
she say--  
  
Now for the 'waltz.' His fingers came down like water over rocks, up and down and up and down, a staircase drawn in clear, ringing tones. He brought his wondering mind back in to center, spiraling down, as his right hand made its way, one two three one two three, back toward his left.  
  
One chord for every beat, shifting notches to the left and right, his left played the bass line that anchored the piece. It thought in circles, paced soft tracks in the floor, returned to its beginning to play the sequence over again. His right went gallivanting back up the keyboard, notes ringing purer and clearer the closer his fingertips neared the cloud line. He could feel the wind on his cheeks. It was cold.  
  
One two three one two three one two three.  
  
One two three four one two three four one two three four.  
  
His right hand and left spoke to each other as he played, a casual conversation at a remove. Know yet? / Never will / Hear that? / Hold still. He opened his eyes, tipping his head back to the ceiling; the wide, broad back of the piano, her big curves luscious and dark against the blond planks of the floor, reflected back at him. Hn. They hadn't remembered to remove the mirrors, then. He'd thought the other one had. He looked back to his keys before the sweep of his gaze brought his own face into view.  
  
Slow arpeggio, walk down the chord, rest. Continue. His right hand returned from its adventures in the high scales, climbing back down, lilting toward the steady chords of his left. Anchor and explorer. Lodestone and ore. Polar opposites...matched set.  
  
"Aoko. I'm Kaitou Kid."  
  
Aoko's eyes widened a little, her double-fisted grip cinching tighter on her mop handle. "You're not funny, Kaito," she growled, angling her elbows out and up for more swinging power. "You can't distract me that easily."  
  
"What if it was true?" he challenged her, midair in a flip above her head. He landed lightly, the toes of one rubber-soled school shoe lightly spanning the foremost edge of a trash bin.  
  
"It's not," she replied, flipping the mop end for end for a quick jab. He landed atop the handle, one foot in front of the other, an impossible balance beam. Aoko straightened out of her attacking crouch, petulantly bracing the head of the mop against her hip, both hands throttling it at its midpoint. She shook it lightly; Kaito held his balance on it easily, swaying like a sapling in the wind.  
  
"What if it was?"  
  
"It's not," Aoko clarified. She glanced behind herself quickly - the space was clear - and took a quick double step backwards, yanking the broom handle out from beneath Kaito's feet faster than he could adjust. He pushed off; the tip of the handle clacked against the floor as his weight pushed it down. Aoko dropped with it rather than be doubled over, which would expose her back; from a crouch, mop held up to guard, she watched Kaito land, heels neatly together on the classroom tile.  
  
He stared her down. "What if it was?"  
  
"No. Kaitou Kid is different than you. That's all there is to it," she growled at him. "Now are you going to fight me or not?"  
  
"I never fight you, Aoko," Kaito said. (One two three four one two three four.) "You never catch me for long enough to make me."  
  
* * *  
  
He sat on the piano bench beside him, facing away from the keys. His left shoulder pressed his left shoulder; he folded his hands in his lap while and listened to the steady chords, heavy, one to a beat, slipping into being like little lead teardrops into a pond. He couldn't see the right hand that brought high, clear tearbells out of the broad curves of the grand piano; he imagined the fingers, slim, pale, tapered, dextrous. Each note was struck deliberately, a soft hammer and a tight-wound cord of metal wire, the sinew of the piano humming on every one.  
  
"It's not her fault," the piano player offered eventually, his voice fitting soft and measured between the chords from his left hand.  
  
"It's mine?"  
  
"Don't think so." One two three, one two three, two three, two three, two three, two three. The notes laddered their way down, straddling each other in a patterned syncopation. "I think it's something her eyes can't see."  
  
"Her heart."  
  
"That too."  
  
He sighed, tipping his head to the side. It fit neatly into the curve of neck and shoulder just under the other's ear. "I should have showed her?"  
  
"Maybe not."  
  
"I wanted to."  
  
"I know."  
  
* * *  
  
Tantei.  
  
Tantei.  
  
Wake up, Tantei.  
  
Kid's eyes opened on the darkened ceiling of Kaito's bedroom. They were in bed. Proper pajamas, no uniform bits laying about, nobody - and nothing - in the bed or bedroom, as far as Kid could see, that shouldn't have been there.  
  
He laid back down, gingerly settling himself head and shoulders into the oversized pillow. The back of one hand lifted to his brow, wiping away sweat-tacky bangs.  
  
"Tantei"? It was nonsensical, but it was there. He'd dreamed of Shinichi - truly Shinichi, as he ought to be - leaning over him tenderly, shaking him awake.  
  
Calling him "detective."  
  
Kid stared unseeing to the ceiling. In the back of the head, Kaito stumbled from slumber, took stock of the situation, and brought his attention to the fore, touching Kid's shoulder in a gentle request for attention.  
  
"Let me drive, Kid. Play the song for us again. I don't think I'll sleep without it."  
  
Mm. Kid slipped places with Kaito in the space of a breath, taking his seat at the piano in their darkened mirror room. The lid tapped quietly against its stops as he slid it back, baring the keys to the weak moonlight.  
  
In bed, Kaito rolled onto his side, bunching the downy pillow up under his head.  
  
Kid stretched his hands a little to warm them, and played.  
  
* * *  
  
Convalescence can bring out the very worst in a person. The sweetest-tempered of souls can turn into a surly, snappish, loathsome toad—it comes from a combination of cabin-fever, general malaise and discomfort, and after a while the sufferer becomes as deathly sick of themselves as their keepers do.  
  
The progress of Shinichi’s convalescence could be charted by the state of ruin that the Professor’s spare room was gradually falling into. It had gone from utter neatness to acquiring a few stacks of books and a laptop; that had been followed by discarded newspapers on the bedside chair, the half-eaten remains of snacks and the occasional empty juice-glass. By the time Friday afternoon had rolled around, the bedcovers had been yanked loose from the foot and were in a convoluted and possibly non-Euclidean tangle.  
  
Shinichi was  _bored._  Horribly, horribly bored. Too wobbly yet to spend much time out of bed, too well to want to be there at all; he’d never been a good patient and his diminution hadn’t changed that in the least. He wanted to be up and moving so badly he could taste it, and Ai had threatened twice to slip mood-altering drugs in among the huge doses of vitamins he was still taking.  
  
(It didn’t help, either, that he’d woken up with his heart in his mouth,  _perfectly aware_  of the answer he’d sent to Kid only a few hours before. Or that he’d checked for a response no less than eleven times through the day. Or that he didn’t exactly know what he was hoping for, or how to react to whatever he got, or… anything. Anything at all. With Ran, he’d at least had a clue or two to go by; but— not this time. This was where logic failed and instinct took over, and all he could hope for (and oh God, he hoped) was that he’d done the right thing.)  
  
And so it was with extreme gratitude that Shinichi heard Heiji’s familiar drawl speaking to someone as Agasa’s front door closed. Marking his place in [ _The Complete Annotated Father Brown_](http://www.batteredbox.com/PasqualeAccardo/FatherBrown.htm), he sat up a little straighter against the pillows, trying to figure out who the other voices belonged to.  
  
“—think so too, Hattori-niisan?”  
  
That was...  _Oh. Uh-oh. Well, Kudo, you knew they’d show up sooner or later; and anyway, it’ll be good to see them. Better find your glasses in a hurry._  
  
"Well, I think ya got a sound theory there, but y'oughta ask Ku--Conan what he thinks of the whole situation. He's the one in charge, right?" Hattori's smile was audible even from across the house, and Shinichi felt equally motivated to either laugh along with the Osaka detective....or strangle him with his own ballcap.  
  
"He's the head Detective Boy, yeah!" A chorus of two agreeable shouts, both from higher voices than the misleadingly full baritone which Shinichi recognized easily as Genta's, told him that the whole crew was in attendance.  _Like I expected otherwise. They're joined at the hips._  
  
"Genta? Mitsuhiko? Ayumi?" Shinichi put on his Conan-voice, calling weakly to his friends; the response was as instantaneous as he'd expected.  
  
"Conan-kuuuuun!" They shouted his name like a battle cry as the three of them thundered into his small sickroom. The bed shook a little as Genta pulled up short against its foot end; Mitsuhiko and Ayumi clamored at Conan's elbow, truly stricken expressions seeking reassurance in his.  
  
"Conan-kun, are you really alright?"  
  
"Ai-chan said that you were--"  
  
"--took the case anyway, because we put Ayumi in charge while you were--"  
  
"Genta-kun took all the--"  
  
"--fair, Mitsuhiko, I told you it--"  
  
"--is worried, how will you  _ever_  catch up, and--"  
  
"--since SUMMER, and--"  
  
"--hasn't been sick  _that_  long, don't be stupid--"  
  
"I'm not stupid!"  
  
"--and the kitten hasn't been seen for three days and--"  
  
"You could  _perhaps_  let him get a word in edgewise."  
  
The trio's frantic, high-decibel chatter stumbled to a halt. Shinichi let out the breath he'd been holding and smiled thinly at Ai, just arrived in the doorway with a nonplussed Heiji behind her. He turned his smile on the kids, each in turn - Mitsuhiko's intense focus, Genta's determined concentration, Ayumi's huge, wibbly eyes.  
  
"It's good to see you guys too."  
  
Three faces beamed at him, and the familiar mixture of exasperation and wry gratitude washed over Shinichi, as comfortable and close-fitting by now as a winter sweater that itches a bit, yes, but is also very warm. Sometimes in his more morbid moments he wondered how long he would have survived without the friendship and camaraderie they’d imposed on him—if his appearance had been a bit older, say early teens, Shinichi’s intelligence and mannerisms wouldn’t have received anywhere near the acceptance he’d gotten. Adolescents (particularly in the group-minded Japanese school system) were notorious for mocking and ridiculing what didn’t fit in; he’d been through it once, and a second time… would have been unbearable. Possibly even unlivable, in a very literal sense.  
  
It was a depressing thought, and he shook it off, rolling his eyes as he accepted a packet of homework to catch up on from Ayumi, who in her position as Temporary Head Detective Boy  _(“GIRL,”_  she’d said darkly) had begun a high-speed delivery of the facts of their current case. It seemed that the Shonen Tantei had been specializing in pet retrieval lately.  
  
“—found it in some bushes and it couldn’t hardly eat yet so Satomi-kun’s been giving it some of his baby sister’s bottle when his kaasan wasn’t looking, and three days ago—QUIT it, Mitsuhiko-kun, let me talk!—three days ago it vanished, and he’s looked everywhere and he left us a note in Genta-kun’s shoes and we talked to him and we’re going to look this afternoon.” She finished on a note of triumph, face pink, and then added sadly, “but you can’t come with us ‘cause you’re sick. How much longer’re you going to be sick, Conan-kun?”  
  
He squirmed uncomfortably; “I wish I knew,” he said, and beyond the three young faces Ai’s flickered with something very much like guilt before smoothing out into her normal calm. “But you guys can keep me updated, can’t you? I’m kind of surprised I haven’t seen you here before now, really.”  
  
Genta scowled, bottom lip sticking out mulishly. “Agasa-hakase said we couldn’t, not ‘til you were feeling better.” He peered at Conan’s pale face; “You’ve got great big black bags under your eyes, Conan-kun. You need to eat more unagi, it’s good for you! I could bring you some—“ Visions of eel-procuration adventures danced gleefully in his eyes.  
  
“Doesn’t Conan-kun hate unagi?” asked Ai mildly from behind the group; “He always gives his to you, doesn’t he, Genta-kun?”  
  
“WellYEAH, but this time I’d only eat a LITTLE so he could—“  
  
“Genta-kun, that’s just really a great big—“  
  
“STOOOOOPPIIIIT.” Ayumi planted her hands on her hips, fuming; she looked severely at Ai. “Don’t be mean, Ai-chan! And Genta-kun, you can only bring Conan-kun some unagi if he promises to eat it all. And Mitsuhiko-kun, YOU shush and listen up. We still need to find that kitten, and there’s the other case too!” Both boys subsided, animosity dropping to the level of surreptitious elbow-poking. Ai, surprisingly, only shrugged slightly and inclined her head, something that made Heiji put up an eyebrow.  
  
“So—this kitten…” A few questions and answers later, it had been established that a) the foundling had been kept in an open box less than three meters from where it had initially appeared; that b) yes, a mama-cat and kittens of approximately the same age were living in the garden-shed of another classmate only two houses away; and c) the mama-cat, her kittens and the missing foundling were all ginger-striped. Q.E.D., an expedition was planned for that afternoon to escort Satomi-kun over to visit said mama-cat and her offspring in order to possibly identify the missing feline. As Satomi-kun’s little sister had painstakingly painted all the kitten’s tiny claws with pink nail-polish the day prior to its disappearance (a possible cause), identification would prove no problem.  
  
“And what’s this about another case?”  
  
Ayumi frowned, small hands gripping the edge of Conan's bed anxiously. "We've been working on it for two  _weeks,_ " she began, "And we can't figure it out, and Yoshitsa-kun is worried sick, and--"  
  
Shinichi put up a hand to soothe her, and Ayumi's quickly rising tone settled down into something less frantic. "Ayumi, tell me from the beginning: What's the case about?"  
  
At Ayumi's elbow, Mitsuhiko cut in. "Yoshitsa-kun's father is missing! He went on a business trip and her mama said that he would be back soon, but she watches the way her mama makes dinner and her hands shake, and Yoshitsa-kun is worried that he's been gone longer than he was supposed to be. And she said her mama won't let her phone him like he said she could, because he won't wake up til after her bedtime, and she wants to stay up late to wait for him to wake up, but her mama won't let her either."  
  
Genta piped up from the end of the bed, frowning with worry. "Once she thought she saw her mama wipe her cheek like she was crying but Yoshitsa-kun says her mama  _never_  cries."  
  
Ayumi nodded firmly. "And we don't have any clues, we even went over to Yoshitsa-kun's house and her mama made us donburi and it was really good, but we didn't see anything suspicious. And we couldn't get near his job because there was a policeman there, and then Takagi-keiji and Sato-keiji came out of the door too, and so we're worried that he's in trouble and got arrested and we don't know what to tell Yoshitsa-kun at all. We haven't told her about the detectives yet."  
  
"So we want you to solve it!" Genta declared, drawing an immediate glare from Mitsuhiko.  
  
"Conan's  _sick_ , Genta, he can't solve it all by himself."  
  
Ayumi frowned at the both of them, then turned imploring eyes on Conan. "But can you  _help_  us solve it?"  
  
Conan grimaced; this had all the possibilities of a very sordid story and a very old one— bored businessman, prosaic wife, inconvenient offspring and the lure of escape. Then again, how many times had he seen the obvious turn out to be smoke and mirrors? “I can try,” he hazarded. He pushed the scatter of books aside and pulled his laptop back into place, booting it up. “You remember the thing I was working on a few weeks ago? The data-sheet?”  
  
Mitsuhiko looked interested. “The list of questions? We could get Yoshitsa-kun to fill it out— she could get some of it from her mom, couldn’t she?” He craned his head sideways, trying to get a glimpse of the screen; Conan’s laptop was a source of quite a bit of envy for the gadget-crazy boy.  
  
“Questions?” Heiji had stepped forward to the other side of the bed and was, comically, leaning forward in a dead mirror-image of Mitsuhiko. “What kind of questions?”  
  
Conan read the list off: “A—Person was last seen where? B—Person was last seen when? C—“  
  
Heiji blinked. “Who by, what resources did he have, what resources were available, transportation, what did they take with them… pretty good basic deal, ‘specially if you’re doin’ stuff at a distance.” He glanced up at the trio. “You think you kids can get all this?”   
  
The Shonen Tantei looked at each other. “We can,” answered Ayumi importantly. She drew herself up to her small height, a confident smile on her face. “Yoshitsa-kun said we could come over tonight if we had anymore questions.” The girl fingered her badge, displayed proudly by her collar. “We’re  _good_  at what we do.”  
  
“Then you can take care of this.” Conan had been loading the file onto a flash-drive; he passed it over—Mitsuhiko’s hand snapped out, snagging it before any of the other three could move; the boy dove past the others in the room, heading towards the computer equipment in the other room. “Go ask the Professor to print you out a handful of these, will you?” He leaned back against the pillows, one hand rubbing at the side of his head. He yawned. “Sorry, guys. Still a little worn out.”  
  
Hattori reached out, laying a brown hand backwise against the boy’s forehead; one eyebrow went up. “Kinda warm, Ku—Conan. More damn fever?” He grimaced, bringing his hands together in a sharp clap. “Okay, idea. I need somethin’ to do, you need t’rest, these guys’ve got an ongoing investigation…”  
  
Ayumi and Genta blinked. “You want to come with us, Hattori-niisan?” Genta hazarded. “You could—we could make you an honorary Detective Boy—“  
  
“GIRL.”  
  
“Ayumi-chan, he’s not a girl. I’M not a girl. We can’t be the, the..." Genta blanched. "...the  _Shoujo_  Tantei.”  
  
She stuck out her bottom lip. “I,” she announced, “am not a boy. I’m a GIRL. And right now I’m the Head Detective, right? So that makes us the Shoujo Tantei until Conan’s back. So  _there.”_  She turned to Heiji. “I’ll get you a badge from Agasa-hakase, he's got some extras. C’mon, Ai-chan,” she said with dignity, and stomped out of the room. Ai gave the remaining three males in the room an amused look before following.  
  
Genta sighed. “Girls,” he said gloomily, “are really, really weird. Get better fast, okay, Conan-kun?” He dragged along behind Ai, leaving Heiji and Conan alone.  
  
The two looked at each other. With an exaggerated eyebrow-waggle and an audible useage of capitals, Conan deadpanned: “He’s A Teenaged Detective With A Knack For Kendo And A Crappy Sense Of Self-Preservation; They’re A Trio Of Precocious Preadolescents With An Understanding Of Correct Police Procedure. Together, They Fight Crime!”  
  
Hattori’s one-handed response was non-verbal but completely understandable; the boy laughed, fighting back another yawn and closing his laptop. “Have fun, Hattori.”  
  
* * *  
  
Shinichi woke to the sound of gentle tapping. Some part of his mind laughed mockingly at him as he followed his first impulse, looking not to the room's door, but up toward its small window. But Shinichi was vindicated - a bird sat tapping the glass lightly with its beak. Shinichi scrambled up to open the window, letting it in, accompanied by a burst of frigid air that made him slam the window shut again, curling up beneath his thick stack of blankets to stop his shivering. From within this cocoon, Shinichi examined his visitor.  
  
He couldn't precisely call it a pigeon, but the bird sitting on his knees was unlike any dove he'd seen from Kid yet. Along with the chevrons of charcoal grey across its wings and its dull rose throat, the dove's most notable feature was the fact that it was, well...grey. Nearly black on its points, at head and knees. Shinichi didn't know _that_  much about birds, but he was pretty sure that doves were only supposed to come in pale colors. And this one was definitely not pale. But it behaved like a trained dove, not a common pigeon, and it was calmly wearing a message tube.  
  
Shinichi's thoughts jerked back to the last communication he'd had with Kid - the message he'd sent, with links to blue roses and almond flowers. He had no idea at all how Kid would react to something like that - to any of this, really. And he had a gut feeling - a fault of his detective's intuition, perhaps - that Kid was making things up as he went.  _That makes two of us._    
  
With an understandable amount of trepidation, Shinichi coaxed the dove closer, opened the message capsule, and unrolled the small slip of paper.  
  
 _Care for a late lunch? I deliver.  
  
-kk_  
  
His immediate, overpowering impulse was to hide beneath the bedcovers or quite possibly the bed itself; that was swiftly quashed by  _What are you, five?_  followed by the mental equivalent of a head-desk.  _Right. Murderers with guns and knives? Easy. A little social interaction with a... whatever... and you flail. You're both reasonable adults, right?_  The problem with that statement, of course, was that one of them was anything but reasonable and the other was anything but adult. To all appearances, anyway; take that a little further and figure in Kid's exacting logic regarding heists and Shinichi's actual age, and it all flipped around like one of those trick drawings where you saw either two human faces or a beautiful vase but never both at the same time.  
  
...ergh. He was stalling, and doing a bad job of it at that.  
  
 _Brazen it out, Kudo. If he can make things up as he goes, then so can you._  Agasa had gone out to run errands, the Shoun--  _Shoujo_  Tantei, Ai and their erstwhile addition had gone kitten-hunting and then, supposedly, to visit Yoshitsa-kun's home. Ran wouldn't be over until after she'd cooked dinner for her father, so... Shinichi actually had the place to himself for a few hours. Weird; he hadn't actually been alone, really  _alone_  in quite a while. Absentmindedly he stroked the dark grey dove; it seemed to like it, ducking its rounded head beneath his fingers and shoving at them demandingly.   
  
"What d'you think, bird?" Shinichi murmured softly. The dove merely cocked one shining black eye at his fingers and muttered deep in its throat, riffling its banded wings slightly to keep its balance on the covers. "Yes? No? He's crazy?  _I'm_  crazy?" It settled its wings calmly, butting against his hand again.  
  
 _Birds of a feather..._  Despite the recent weirdness, it'd be good to see Kid again-- really good. And there was a pencil in the bedside table's drawer.  
  
A few minutes later the gray dove was on its way, bearing a reverse-sided message that said  _Sure, your turn to buy. -- KS_  Closing the window, Shinichi settled himself back beneath the covers and tried to pretend that his shakey nerves owed more to weakness and the cold than to anything else.  
  
Less than ten minutes later, the front door clicked open. Shinichi sat bolt upright in bed, heart hammering, as Professor Agasa's alarm system alerted the household: _"Please disarm system now. Disarm within ten...nine...eight..."_  Just as he had decided to bolt - well, stumble as quickly as possible - toward the front door to aid the intruder (if it was Kid) or subdue them (if otherwise), the system beeped pleasantly and announced,  _"System disarmed."_  
  
Moments later, Kid - wearing a face Shinichi didn't recognize, but smiling at him from eyes that he  _definitely_  did - peeked around the doorframe of Shinichi's sickroom. The strong smell of takeout yakitori wafted toward Shinichi from the bag in Kid's hand. "Good afternoon, chibitantei."  
  
He knew his eyes had grown comically wide, but-- taking in the white delivery-service jumpsuit, cap and logo and all-- Shinichi felt an embarrassingly Conanish giggle welling up in his throat; he stifled it with some difficulty. "Afternoon... you weren't kidding about the delivery, were you?  _Please_  tell me some poor deliveryman's not unconscious in a closet somewhere." Whatever was in the bag smelled AMAZING, and his stomach saluted the aroma with a gurgle loud enough to inform them both that it didn't give a damn about deliverymen, unconscious or otherwise.  
  
"Then I won't tell you," Kid replied smoothly, holding his glee in check as he entered the room. Folding one leg beneath him, Kid perched on the edge of Shinichi's bed. "Heyo, Mokutan," he added, greeting the dove on Shinichi's knees with a grin. "You beat me here! You win."  
  
Shinichi looked from Kid to the dove and back again. "How - he --" He looked at the window - yup, still firmly latched. "I thought I--"  
  
Kid laughed, a giddy sound that belonged on rooftops. "Oh, your  _face!_  Moku, should we tell him?" The dove fluffed his feathers, settling in for a nap on Shinichi's knee and tucking his beak under one wing. Kid nodded in response, savoring Shinichi's expression. "Okay, if you think so." Then, to the thoroughly baffled detective -- "Moku came to find me with your note, then hid inside the bag when I came in. You were so busy gawking at me, you didn't even see him pop out." Kid pulled the handles of the bag of food wide, revealing a small fleece cushion on top of one of the takeout boxes. "It's just so warm in there, Moku doesn't even care that it smells like his jiichan."  
  
One small eyebrow went up. "So if we fed him some of the leftovers, would that be cannibalism?" wondered Shinichi aloud. "Whatever; it smells  _good._  Thank you," he said, a smile growing with every second; and if the words felt a little awkward, then so was the smile that accompanied them...  
  
...but only a little. Less than he would have believed.  
  
The take-out containers made a kind of picnic, balanced on some of the more disreputable books across Shinichi's bedspread; still halfway cocooned in his blankets, Shinichi accepted a pair of chopsticks and gestured with them at Kid's face. "Can you eat like that? In disguise, I mean?" The jumpsuited figure perched on the edge of his bed had discarded his cap by now, but looking at him was almost like seeing a double image-- Shinichi  _knew_  what he looked like and the face in his mind's eye overlaid the one beaming at him, with only the eyes linking the two. Well, and the grin.  
  
"If I couldn't, what good would my disguises be?" Kid's smile was entirely sincere. It was deeply heartening to see Shinichi actively investigate the practicalities of Kid's disguise equipment -- to see him, in short, engage in the thief's everyday life. "My disguises have to function  _as_  my face, not instead of my face; verisimilitude is of utmost importance to me." To demonstrate, he worked his face through several ludicrous expressions, raising and lowering his brows, drawing in his cheeks in a ridiculous fishmouth, squinting and opening his eyes wide, grinning and stretching his jaw. "See? Second skin."  
  
It was fascinating; he could  _see_  the muscles of jaw and throat working beneath the thin layer of the mask. It was also funny as hell, and this time the snicker escaped; Shinichi smothered it behind his chopsticks with only partial success as he took a container of yakitori, careful not to upset the sleeping bird perched on his knee. His stomach growled again as he slid the lid off of the wide, shallow box, fragrant steam escaping to wreathe the air in inviting, curling wisps. "Think this's the first time I've really been hungry in a while," he murmured, and took a bite, glancing apologetically at the dove. "Sorry, Moku. It's me or the chickens."  
  
Kid considered this for a minute. "Have you eaten well since you made the change?" he asked. "I'd think it'd take a lot of energy -- speaking purely in caloric terms, of course. I've already seen what it does to you in terms of pain. But is there an energy crash afterward?"  
  
 _Oh yeah-- better tell him about my little problem. Big problem? I need a warning-label that reads 'Size Of Actual Contents May Vary',_  thought Shinichi wryly, wondering just how to go about it without causing too much trauma. "Not well, no; just haven't been hungry. And..." he hesitated for a second, stirring his chicken a bit before picking up another bite. "It looks like I may have a few, um, size issues in my future. You know how colds tend to hang around long after you thought they were gone and pop back in unexpectedly? Like that." He chewed and swallowed, trying to make light of the whole thing. "Only without the sniffles and with a need for two sizes of clothes on hand."  
  
"Don't worry," he added quietly after a moment. "Haibara's not too concerned, so long as I keep taking her damned supplements. I'm not exactly looking forward to the process, but--" He shrugged, still looking down at his yakitori. "I wanted you to know."  
  
 _I needed to tell you_  hung in the air behind the last phrase, all but audible. Both thief and detective let the silence hang, Shinichi focused on his food, Kid staring into space, mulling things over. There was a lot he  _could_  say in response to Shinichi's words - or his implications - but Shinichi had sent blue roses, not red ones. Besides which, there was a lot more running between them than merely Kid's crush.  
  
When he reached a decision, it was with a decisive thump of one hand against the other.  
  
"I'll stay close, then," Kid informed his friend. "You're going to need someone to help."  
  
Shinichi let out a breath he was only marginally aware of having held. "Yeah," he said softly. "I will. Thanks." He looked up then, smiling again, sketching a small-to-large shape in the air with a piece of chicken. "I promise I'll let you know if I feel any sudden growth-spurts coming on. Doesn't seem fair, though-- you seem to be doing all the helping. Who helps you out?" The boy took another bite. "It's not like your life's all wine and roses--"   
  
Shinichi froze in mid-sentence, eyes suddenly wide, their deep blue seeming to darken even as a tale-tell flush stained his skin. "Not fair," he muttered again, and sighed, poking at the yakitori with his chopsticks. "I need to get out of this damn bed. Can't do a thing while I'm stuck here, not for you or Ran or anyone."  
  
"...except not act my age. The younger one, I mean. Sorry," Shinichi added, a little shamefaced.  
  
"Oh, don't be so hard on yourself," Kid offered, the light bounce of his tone hinting at tightly-leashed laughter beneath its surface. "You really weren't acting at  _all_  like a sulky child until the last thirty seconds or so." He beamed brightly at the little detective. Perched on the edge of the bed and over his food as he was, Kid's posture meant he and Shinichi were on a level, and so it was with a shit-eating grin and earnest blue eyes that Kid dared his companion to take offense at his phrasing.  
  
But almost before they'd become fixed in place, the smile slid slowly from his face, and the mania from his eyes, leaving in their stead a simple, straightforward expression of regard with which Kid studied the other's features. After yet another brief moment, a small spark of the smile returned, lighting the thief's never-still eyes with warmth. "Thank you for asking, though, Shinichi," Kid said slowly, enunciating the detective's given name deliberately. "I must confess I have one aide, but I don't make much use of him these days. He's old, see, and I'm much more suited than he to long hours."  
  
Still smarting slightly from the teasing (although enjoying it as well-- it was like hearing a familiar tongue after being too long in a foreign country), the boy watched the other's expressions change and change again. Even through the mask they were remarkable, fluid and mercurial. "Your 'keeper'," he reflected, and grinned back a little. "Now, why do I have the feeling he'd have a rough time of it even if he was half his age? It can't be an easy thing, playing stage-assistant to the infamous 1412. But..." Shinichi paused. "What I meant was... you seem to be-- oh, hell. What I'm trying to say is, if you need help, if I can give it-- don't be afraid to ask me, okay? I'm not going anywhere."   
  
He busied himself with his yakitori again for a few moments, and when he spoke again his voice was preoccupied. "Everyone seems to be so concerned with helping me lately-- Ai, Agasa, Ran, Hattori, the kids... you. I'd like to balance the scales a little, not-- y'know, not from being in debt, but just... aaagh. Is any of this making sense to you, or should I just shut up now?" he asked, raising a frustrated eyebrow.  
  
Kid slowly, deliberately, raised both eyebrows to his hairline, the corners of his lips twisted to hold back his grin. A sensation not unlike a flock of doves taking flight, battering wind with short, sudden pushes in all directions, began to overtake his heart, filling his lungs with the unsteady breath that encouraged giggles. To hold these back, Kid drew in a steadying gulp of air and displayed it as a gasp of shock. One hand raised to flutter at his chest and throat, the perfect picture of perturbed propriety.  
  
"Kudo Shinichi! Kudo Shinichi,  _Tantei,_  did you just propose to  _help_  an international jewel thief? To  _aid and abet_  the brilliant, diverse, and dazzling schemes which, guaranteed by the very nature of the individual designing them, are and will continue to be rather extraordinarily, lusciously illegal? To abscond your detective's sense of lawmanship and tie it up in a corner closet for a weekend?" He paused for half a beat, watching Shinichi's horrified expression fully take shape, and unpinned the sides of his smile; the trademark Kaitou Kid grin, as manic as it was patently insane, sprang instantly into place across his features. "Hmm." He appeared to consider his own words, radiating glee and a warm satisfaction even through his mock frown. He tapped one finger to his chin, stereotypically 'pensive.' "...Perhaps that was going too far?"  
  
There was an awful pause.  
  
"......If I had a bar of soap," remarked Shinichi when it had ended, "I'd be washing your mouth out with it  _right now._  But I guess," he added reflectively, "if you put it  _that_ way..."  
  
"Yes. I guess I did." He dropped his face into his hands. "I am so going to Detective's Hell someday, aren't I?"   
  
Kid squeed. "Delicious." He popped a piece of yakitori into his mouth, chewed briskly, and swallowed. "Well! Now that that's decided. You are correct that my life is not, as you put it, wine and roses. Nor is it easy for Jii-chan to keep up with his young master 1412. But I'm a solitary sort of professional. You have to be in my line of work, and I enjoy it besides. There's only room for one on my glider."  
  
Shinichi eyed him cautiously. "I did promise not to go easy on you at heists. But... before or after isn't  _during,_  anymore than working out how a murder was done is the same thing as committing one myself-- horrible analogy, I know." He couldn't help himself; Shinichi dredged up as much of an air of dignity as his small frame and current pajama-clad appearance would allow, sitting up straight and raising his chin. His eyes sparkled, deep and blue. "But I  _am_  well-versed in your modus operandi, history and abilities as much or more as anyone is, I'm perfectly capable of extrapolating the same sort of attempts and contrivances as you've managed to date, and," (he stared Kid in the eye, challenge and confidence radiating) "I've come the closest to catching you. Of  _anyone."_  
  
He folded his arms, fighting back the grin that kept trying to escape.  
  
Kid matched Shinichi grin for grin, wide enough to show the little tips of his dogteeth, and ponderously wagged one finger at him. " _Closest_ , but still not quite close _enough_ , Tantei," he sighed. "And to your credit, some times you  _have_  reached within what seems hairs' breadths of my cape,  _ever_  so close..." He pulled off one glove and slowly extended that hand toward Shinichi, turning and folding the wrist and fingers, equally slowly, as he did. Each flick of his fingers threatened to produce a trick or illusion; each one didn't. And after a sequence of three or four of these, Kid's bare fingertips hovered a scant six inches from Shinichi's nose. "And yet," Kid murmured, everything of challenge and daring poured into his voice's low volume, "Neeeever quite can reach, can you?"  
  
Shinichi studied the fingertips... and, very slowly, grinned.  _"Not yet,"_  he said-- and moved.  
  
\--not to grab the hand that, with his weakened state, would almost certainly be too fast for him; but with his chopsticks, popping them nimbly into Kid's own box of yakitori, stealing a piece out and dropping it into his mouth. He chewed, laid his chopsticks down across his lap, and swallowed. "Delicious," he informed the startled thief.  
  
And  _then_  he reached for Kid's hand.  
  
Kid's hand closed around Shinichi's before he'd even thought about it; he was so startled out of his supremely confident position on top of their game of banter and challenge that, hand linked with Shinichi's much smaller one, Kid still found himself looking instead at his yakitori box where, yes, one piece was missing. He looked back up at Shinichi with an unguarded expression. "I don't know whether I'm more impressed that you got that far within my guard without me blocking, or that you _took_  my  _yakitori!_ " Their hands, still linked, hovered between them -- completely ignored by Kid.  
  
And by Shinichi as well. "You can have some of mine," he offered cheerfully. "You bought this time, anyway."  
  
However, before Kid could either accept or refuse, there was a faint flutter of wings. Moku, who had been sitting with his head tucked beneath one wing all this time, had woken at Shinichi's abrupt movements. Shaking his feathers into place, the bird quite deliberately hopped up onto the edge of Shinichi's yakitori-box, reached in, pecked out a fragment, took it up onto Shinichi's elbow and then sidled up and across to sit on their linked fingers while he enjoyed his treat in peace.  
  
Witnessing this act of near-cannibalism, Shinichi's eyes grew wide, and he clapped his free hand over his mouth in order to keep from startling the dove with his laughter.   
  
Kid watched his dove wryly. "Mokutan, you have the most  _atrocious_  timing."   
  
"Hey, he's YOUR dove."   
  
"And what is  _that_  supposed to mean?" Kid challenged the detective, tugging on Shinichi's hand for emphasis. Mokutan, distrusting the stability of his perch, took his yakitori over to a quieter corner of the bed. " _You're_  the one who sets off fireworks from rooftops! I should think timing choices like  _that_  make you more than liable to be labeled a hypocrite if you scold me or my dove any further."  
  
Crumbs dropped onto the bedspread as Moku continued to nibble his bit of chicken. "Worked, didn't it?" Shinichi answered the thief, eyes dancing. "Glass houses, stones, pot calling kettle, et cetera." He tugged right back, punctuating the last few syllables with one tug for each; the impromptu punctuation was slightly spoiled by a huge yawn that intruded slightly at the end.  
  
Kid's grip on Shinichi's hand shifted, curling around it to hold, instead of gripping with mind to fight. "Sick tantei need their rest," he said, before releasing Shinichi's hand, replacing his glove, and briskly wrapping up the leftovers of their meal. "And good little kaitou should leave them to it." As Shinichi opened his mouth to protest, Kid held up one finger with a quiet smile. "The more the tantei rests, the sooner he can get out of the bed and back to the real world, where kaitou run amok and need to be corralled."  
  
Shinichi snorted quietly, but allowed himself to slide back down the pillows and into the embrace of the covers. "The 'real world'. Which real world is this? The one where normal things happen, or the one I've been living in lately?" He considered the question for a second and then answered himself aloud: "Truthfully? All things considered, I think I prefer the latter. It may fit the definition for 'clinically insane', but it's the more interesting of the two."  
  
 _Much more interesting, Kid. Thank you._  
  
Gathering the flat boxes of leftover yakitori together, Kid placed the stack on the bedside table, topped with a little slip of receipt paper. He gathered together the empty skewers, dropping those and the dirty napkins into the trash can; with everything neatly arranged, Kid returned to Shinichi's bedside and took the edge of the covers gently in both hands. He smoothed them out and arranged them across Shinichi's shoulders, covering the boy nearly up to his chin. "Wait right here," he grinned, before snagging Shinichi's water glass from the bedside table and ducking into the bathroom just outside the door.  
  
In a moment he was back, wiping small drops of water off the outside of the filled glass. "This should keep you until Mouri-san and the rest return home." Kid set the glass on the table, far enough from the edge that it couldn't easily be knocked, and retrieved his delivery boy's hat from the bed near Shinichi's feet. "Well then." He settled the cap onto his head, tugging firmly in back to bring it down over the considerable resistance of his wild hair. From beneath the brim, his eyes caught the sunlight from the window and sparked brightly, satisfied and smug; he sketched a short bow, characteristic grin in place. "Good afternoon to you, sir, and please do patronize our delivery service again! Come on, Moku."  
  
From within the warm comfort of his bed, Shinichi grinned right back; if it went any wider, his face was going to unzip. "I'll certainly consider it in the future; the service is  _excellent._  And good afternoon to you too."   
  
Kid held down his smirk - mostly - as he tipped his hat and slipped out of the room, Mokutan primly riding his shoulder. From the front door, Shinichi could hear a brisk _bip bip bipbip bip bip bip bipbip beeeeep_  as Kid flawlessly set the silent alarm, followed by  _bip bip bip bip beeeep_  and a pleasant woman's voice announcing, _"System Armed. Exit now."_  as the thief set the audible alarm as well. Then, the front door clicked quietly open, and quietly shut. As silence spread in his wake, the boy sighed and closed his eyes: exhilarated, suddenly quite exhausted, and, just as suddenly, simply  _happy._  
  
* * *

 


	21. "Heroine, retrieval, nightmare"

  
_Happy._  
  
Well. Not so much, an hour or two later.   
  
He wasn't exactly morose; Or even  _un_ happy, just... rueful, perhaps. Wryly amused. Contemplative. Resigned. Guiltily aware that the fictional persona of Sherlock Holmes would be eyeing him disapprovingly over his violin and asking him quite pointedly just how much of a damn fool he planned on becoming. Quite a lot of one, apparently.  
  
 _But Holmes did plenty of illegal acts; carrying a firearm without a permit (not that they had them in Victorian England, so okay, maybe not that one), breaking and entering, nonmedical use of an opiate; impersonating various public, private and nonexistant persons; travelling under an assumed name; faking his own death..._  
  
Agasa had come back some time earlier, half-waking Shinichi when he'd peeked in around the doorjamb. Through his lashes the boy'd watched the portly scientist do a quick visual check and then pause, sniffing the air curiously before pulling the door quietly closed behind him. Not surprising; the room did still smell like yakitori.  
  
 _So... illegal acts. Let's consider your sins, Kudo Shinichi, starting with impersonating a minor; living under said assumed name with the aid of forged papers; occasionally drugging a nonconsenting adult with a sedative; presenting evidence in official police investigations under assumed names; unauthorized use of surveillance devices/phonetaps; concealing and downright theft of evidence..._  
  
The front door opened; Hattori Heiji's voice came in along with his footsteps, accompanied by the thunder of three other sets all in Size Preadolescent, plus those of one lighter and more sedate pair. Why was it that little kids' footsteps were so much louder than those of much bigger feet?  
  
 _...aiding and abetting minors in disturbing the scene of a crime... endangerment of said minors... and let's not forget consorting with known felons. Consorting's a good word. I like 'consorting'._  Shinichi pulled the blankets a little higher, pushing back a few thoughts he'd had along that line. Fat lot of good they'd do him at the moment, after all.  
  
Hattori was saying something about Ran; he sounded a little ragged and just a touch desperate. Somewhere a little further away, Haibara was asking Agasa a question in her Very Suspicious Voice-- it seemed to concern 'chicken' and 'have you been' and 'really, Professor?' Shinichi winced guiltily, burrowing beneath his covers.  
  
 _Back to the subject. So you've been breaking the law since you got shrunk, hm? One for the books, Kudo-- solving mysteries in self-defense? Did it ever occur to you that you've been a much more effective detective since your reduction than you ever were in your teenaged form? People listened to you, but then you were just a 'very intelligent young man', like the newspapers said; now you're a prodigy.  
  
Not that that'll help you _ _one damn bit_ _if you get caught abetting Kid in his illegal operations. Why DID you volunteer, anyway?  
  
...because it felt right. Because you wanted to, badly. Because some little scale in the back of your mind weighed the idea and said Do This. God alone knows what he'll ask you to do, but... You did it because you knew it'd scandalize and delight him. You _ _did_ _._  
  
Shinichi groaned softly and rolled over in bed, tucking the blankets higher around his ears until all that was visible was his cowlick against the pillow.  _Does it help or does it make it worse that Tousan and Kaasan would totally approve if they knew?_  
  
The thunder of little feet - and one pair of big ones - neared Shinchi's room, but he didn't move an inch.  _Who wears their glasses under the covers anyway?_  he grumbled, as the bed rocked with the impact of three small - but momentous - bodies. Stuck in his funk as he was, it took a few moments for what the Shoujo Tantei were babbling at him to make sense. And when it did, Shinichi bolted up from under the covers. His head protested the sudden movement, so it was with one hand pressed to his temples, one eye squinted open and focused on Ayumi, that Shinichi demanded:  
  
" _What_  did you say?"  
  
" _Haibara,_ " Genta cut in, bouncing up and down for attention. "She saved the day! And it was really weird and I don't know if I ever want her to do that again, but it was really cool when she did it, I guess, cause he believed us!"  
  
Ayumi nodded vehemently. "She did, she did! He was suspicious and we had our papers but we didn't want to show him them, cause he'd take our evidence, and Yoshitsu-kun wasn't any help, he just stood there like a brick, and his momma listened to the man and wanted to know too, and--"  
  
Shinichi blinked slowly, sliding pieces of the story together with difficulty. "Woah, woah, guys, okay, from the beginning. Who's 'he'?"  
  
"That was the man who came to Yoshitsu-kun's place," Ayumi explained clearly, her excitement calmed significantly by Conan's all-business tone. "He told Yoshitsu-kun's kaasan things, but we couldn't hear because his kaasan stuck us in Yoshitsu-kun's bedroom while they talked."  
  
Genta nodded firmly. "Yoshitsu-kun, too!  _None_  of us could listen. And Yoshitsu-kun's kaasan looked upset when he left. And then Ayumi followed Yoshitsu-kun into the kitchen to give his kaasan a hug."  
  
"That wasn't why he caught us!" Ayumi protested, crossing her arms petulantly. " _Your_  tummy was the one that grumbled so loud!"  
  
"But it smelled so  _gooooood,_ " Genta crooned. "Unagiiii..."  
  
"There wasn't any unagi there,  _Genta,_ " Mitsuhiko snapped, making every head in the room spin to focus on him. From his position leaning against the doorframe, Hattori shot a quick glance over at Shinichi, reassuring him that nothing  _fatal_  had happened, as Mitsuhiko's little fists clenched tight, frustration rising slowly in his face.  
  
"Mitsuhiko, what's wrong?" Shinichi was beginning to get the general picture, but the last bit of information would have to come from either Haibara or Mitsuhiko - and he knew his odds of the former.  _Not quite blood from a stone; still, getting Mitsuhiko to talk will be easier._  "Why're you upset?"  
  
"No reason," Mitsuhiko gritted out, face turned down. Ayumi was right on his shoulder though, tugging his sleeve. "Leave me alone, Ayumi! If you and Genta hadn't gotten us caught, Haibara wouldn't have had to -- to --"  
  
 _Truly_  fascinated, as people tend to be around car wrecks, Shinichi shot a glance toward the doorway, where - predictably - a familiar towheaded scientist stood to silently observe the scene. And by the looks of it, Haibara was  _pissed._  
  
 _So that's how it is,_  Shinichi realized, ruthlessly smothering his urge to snicker. As his friend, Mitsuhiko didn't need that from him. ...But Haibara would be getting a double dose of it as soon as the others cleared out.  
  
Instead of pressing Mitsuhiko further, Shinichi glanced up to Hattori with a plastic, curious expression. "Hattori...niisan, where were you while everything was happening?"  
  
"Outside," Hattori answered with a shrug. "I was out picking somethin' up from the conbini for Yoshitsu-san, since she'd said we could all stay for dinner. I came back just in time to run smack into the guy as he was leaving. He looked cranky - all done up in a suit and shades, too."  
  
"What made him so cranky, I wonder," Shinichi mused. "Did he want to see your question sheets?"  
  
"Yeah," Genta nodded, frowning. "And he wanted to keep them all and not give them back. He said we shouldn't meddle."  
  
Ayumi nodded, thoughtfully tapping one finger to her lip as she recalled details. "And he was very angry even before he caught us, but I don't know why. He kept stopping himself from yelling at Yoshitsu-kun or his kaasan. Like he knew it wasn't their fault."  
  
Shinichi raised an eyebrow. "It?"  
  
Ayumi shrugged. "Whatever he was mad about. He didn't want to leave us alone once he caught us, either. We thought he'd never leave, and take our sheets with him too!"  
  
 _Here it is,_  Shinichi thought, his glee at the expected explanation tempered with caution. What could have inspired a visit like this man had made to Yoshitsu-san? _Maybe it wasn't him cheating, but her,_  Shinichi mused, revising his earlier theory.  _The visitor could be a jilted lover, or someone's brother._  
  
"So what did you do to get him to leave, anyway?" Hattori asked, startling Genta and Mitsuhiko. Ai's scowl darkened, and Ayumi glanced worriedly over at her friend before answering Hattori.  
  
"Ai-chan did it," she explained. "It was amazing! We were stuck in the living room, and the mean man was demanding our sheets back, and then Ai-chan came back from the bedroom..."  
  
*  
  
"I'm  _telling_  you kids, gimme those sheets now! You're gonna be sorry if you don't."  
  
The Shoujo Tantei exchanged quick, worried glances between them. Conan had taught them to never let evidence get destroyed, and even if they didn't know  _why_  he wanted the papers, they all could be sure the man wasn't going to use them the way they were supposed to be. Between Yoshitsu-kun and the man, Ayumi puffed up like a little guard kitten, tightening her tug-of-war grip on the stack of evidence papers and opening her mouth to yell back at him - even though he was much bigger, much meaner, and much louder than her and the boys put together. Yoshitsu-kun's kaasan was leaning against the kitchen doorjamb, her eyes big and scared, and Ayumi told herself to be brave. If only Conan could save them...  
  
The scene was interrupted by a high, shrill voice from the hallway. "Ojii-san," the voice said, even more high and fragile than Ayumi's. Everyone's heads pivoted slowly to fix on the source of the voice. While the Shoujo Tantei boggled, the man stared down his newest opponent, a tiny child with neat blond hair and a....labcoat?  
  
"Ojii-san, those are for my big mystery! Please don't take them, I took a long time making up where the prince went and what the knights have to do to get him back!" Her eyes were big, watery, and smoothest, clearest blue; one little hand reached out and grabbed the man's side of the stack of papers, pulling it from his startled, unresisting grip - and from Ayumi's as well - and folding the stack close to her chest. "This is important science stuff! The knights need to know all this stuff so they know when to time travel to."  
  
The Shoujo Tantei blinked. The man blinked. Haibara Ai stared him down with her big, wibbly gaze.  
  
"'Big mystery,'" he repeated incredulously. "'Important science stuff'? You're writing a  _story?"_  
  
The little blonde in the labcoat's bottom lip trembled. "It's a VERY GOOD story," she assured him in her high, chirpy voice; the chirps wavered, and a crystal tear welled up in each blue eyes. "Please don't take it, Ojii-san! I still have to color all the pictures in and I'm out of red crayons!" The last word dissolved into a sob as the tears spilled over and ran down the child's pale cheeks; she began to cry in earnest--  
  
\--very loudly-- VERY, VERY loudly--  
  
\--and the man in the gray suit backed away involuntarily. Ayumi, Genta and Mitsuhiko, however, stared at their classmate in utter horror. From outside, a knock came on the door accompanied by Hattori Heiji's muffled voice; swearing beneath his breath, the angry man spun on his heel, jerking the door open and pushing past the startled Osakajin. His footsteps rapidly receded down the hallway as Hattori slowly shut the door.  
  
"Uh... What just happened here?" he asked slowly.  
  
"Nothing important," said Ai calmly; wiping away the tears that had coursed down her face with a tissue, she nodded at the detective and then at the other children. "Isn't that right?"  
  
"..........." Four huge sets of eyes stared back.  
  
"Hn. Now, where were we... Hattori-niisan, you brought the leeks, correct?" Ai turned to Yoshitsu-kun's mother, folding her tissue into a meticulously precise square and tucking it into her pocket as she looked up at the utterly shell-shocked woman. "May I assist with preparation of dinner, Yoshitsu-san?"  
  
*  
  
"And  _that_  was when Yoshitsu-san kicked us out and said we should go home." Ayumi drooped where she stood as she told the last of the story, looking hopefully up at Conan with tired eyes. "And we haven't had dinner yet, and Mitsuhiko wouldn't say a word to any of us and he still isn't talking to Haibara, and--"  
  
Ayumi was interrupted at this point by Mitsuhiko storming stompily out of the room, chin tucked down. He pressed himself to the far side of the doorway as he passed through it, so that not even his sleeve brushed Ai's. The scientist watched him go, sighed, and crossed the room to claim its only chair.  
  
Shinichi looked from Ai to Ayumi and Genta, to Hattori. He blinked, processing all he'd been told. Obviously, there was the initial,  _ludicrous_  mental image of Ai _breaking down sobbing_  over  _red crayons._  There was an associated stab of pride in her survival instinct - just as ruthlessly tenacious and unlimited as his own. And there was a larger, deeper concern, which could most quickly be answered by reading those data sheets,  _right this instant._  Something was truly rotten in this scenario, and he itched to discover what it was.  
  
"Why don't you see if the Professor can fix you all a snack to tide you over until you head home?" This suggestion was accepted with varying degrees of reluctance and enthusiasm, and as the two straggled out of the room Shinichi gave Ai a Look. "Red Crayons?"  
  
She raised her chin defiantly. "It  _worked,_  Kudo-kun," the blonde snapped back very quietly. "And if I counted the times I've seen you be cloyingly, childishly, tooth-rottingly--"  
  
The detective waved a conceding hand. "Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Sometimes you have to become one with the cuteness. Whatever. The datasheets, please?"  
  
The datasheets provided little more than basic information, the who-what-where of a case; it wasn't until Shinichi got about halfway down the first sheet (thank God Ai'd done the writing, her penmanship was definitely preferable to Ayumi's, Genta's or Mitsuhiko's, or to Heiji's for that matter) that he caught something that made him frown. "Wait,  _where_  was he seen last? In a karaoke bar with a fellow employee... directly following a business-trip? Where to?"  
  
Heiji pointed to a bulleted section a little further down the page. "Outta the country. Look at the top part again, Kudo. His son said he'd bring him back a souvenir've some sort. They gave his luggage back to his wife."  
  
"Anything missing?"  
  
"Clothes, pair of shoes, wallet... what you'd expect, pretty much." Hattori gave his friend a headshake. "Kudo? Those little kids? They're SHARKS. I did everything I could think of t'shake 'em off; they can smell blood in the water, and damned if they didn't do a pretty good little investigation for amateurs. I don't know how surprised they're gonna be when we tell 'em what really happened."  
  
"Amateurs? They're not, exactly." Ai shrugged, still with a bit of temper showing in her eyes. "As far as it goes, they're almost dismayingly experienced in proper investigative procedure... for gradeschoolers. One gets used to it after a while."  
  
"Mmm," Shinichi agreed absently, reading back over the list of carefully printed information. "There's something here that doesn't feel right to me; I can't tell what yet, but something's just not  _right_  with this." He milled the information through his mind again, driving away the unimportant chaff and seeking the meaning inside the data points.  _Mid-forties. Japanese. Of good health and average weight._  What was he missing?  
  
"Lookit the top part  _closer,_ " Hattori advised, walking closer and taking a seat on Shinichi's bed near the boy's feet. "Current employer an' job description."  
  
Shinichi scanned up the page, looking for the relevant entry; when he found it, the mental  _thud_  of a case finally coming together felt less satisfying than usual, counterpointed as it was by the queasiness in his stomach.  
  
 _Current Employer: Hoshi Gyūniku shipping company.  
Job Title: Accounts & Receiving Manager_  
  
"What was an accounts manager doing on a business trip in South America?" he asked quietly. Neither Ai nor Hattori answered him, mostly because they both knew they didn't have to. Shinichi pushed his bangs back from his brow, sweat clinging to his palm as he pulled it away. "I don't imagine his wife actually saw him in that bar...But why would she question the word of her husband's boss, either?"  
  
"That's why they wanted the sheets, Kudo," Hattori explained. "They didn't want anybody looking in--"  
  
Shinichi nodded, interrupting. "Yeah... yeah. Even little kids can ask the right sort of questions...even by accident." He looked to the sheets in his hands, gaze unfocused, before shaking himself a little and drawing his attention up to Ai. "That's why you put on such a show."  
  
"If seeing the data itself hadn't been enough to convince me, the man's manner certainly would have been," Ai explained coolly. "I'm more than acquainted with the attitudes of people with guns, power, and a security breach."  
  
"Well, you did good. Hopefully it'll throw him off for long enough that we can get this to my dad and get a breakthrough out of it," Hattori said, his tone resolved. "Getting it to him is gonna be the tricky part; I bet they'll take another whack on me if I try. Kudo's still sick. Maybe you an' the Professor could take it, Ai?"  
  
Haibara blinked, momentarily arrested. "With your assistance," she said cautiously. "Rather than waiting for him to come to us again, could we not scan the information and email it directly to him? If he's been under surveillance himself-- something that shouldn't be left out of our considerations-- it'd be best if he not approach the Professor's home again."  
  
The blonde hugged her arms to herself, eyes shuttered. "Surveillance... is not something I like to consider," she muttered.  
  
Hattori shifted uneasily on the end of the bed, snagging Shinichi's blanket-covered foot absentmindedly. "You think Oyaji's being watched?" He waggled the foot in agitation.  
  
"Wouldn't surprise me." Shinichi's toes wriggled in a rather bizarre approximation of a nod. "And when were we targeted? Right after your father took over with the reporters, right? No," he said thoughtfully, "I think Haibara's right; he's probably under watch. I doubt they'd go after him directly, though, it'd make too much of a splash."  
  
"Amusin' comparison," Hattori offered dryly. "Last time they didn't much seem t'care about splashing."  
  
Haibara raised an eyebrow. "Awful Osakan puns aside, that does not solve the problem of transmitting our information to Hattori senior."  
  
"There's always fax." Three heads swiveled toward the doorway -- Agasa stood framed in it, hands folded behind his back. "I believe I could protect it - the data, that is - from being hacked on its way to your father's office, Hattori-kun. And that would make for the least delay before he has it in hand."  
  
Hattori and Shinichi shared a glance, then both groaned. Hattori covered his face with one hand. "I'm feelin' really stupid right about now."  
  
From her chair, Ai cleared her throat daintily. "I would reassure you that it would pass, but..."  
  
Shinichi glanced sidelong at her, quickly enough that he caught the small smile she was working to hide. "Oi oi oi, Haibara. You didn't think of it either."  
  
"Untrue. I simply didn't think the Professor had the technology to encrypt the transmission thoroughly enough." She glanced to Agasa for response, but he dismissed the thought cheerily.  
  
"No offense taken, Ai-kun, it's true that I don't do much work with telecommunications. But I do think I've got a way to pull this off."  
  
Hattori sighed. "Sounds good. In the meantime... I got somethin' I need to take care of." He stood up, stretching, and rummaged around in his backpack for a few minutes before pulling out a notebook and a pen.  
  
* * *  
  
A little later...  
  
In the upper story of the Professor's house there was a bay window-seat where the wall bulged out above the eccentric slant of the roof. It was in a seldom-used second study that held old technical volumes, boxes of outdated patents and Volkswagon repair manuals with greasy thumbprints in the margins; the striped cushions were sun-faded and stiff with lack of use but still serviceable enough. Dusty shelves to either side, dog-eared with a combination of professional digests from various universities, held old photo-albums and (if you looked in the right places) decade-old manga volumes labeled 'KUDO' in crooked kana.  
  
It had made a perfectly good place to settle back and read or nap or just buy a little time in which to think, once upon a time, for a certain small boy when his parents and Agasa-hakase had been busy with one thing or another; most of the books had been uninteresting to young Kudo Shinichi but he'd managed to haul a considerable amount of his own personal reading-material up to the quiet spot. The seat, which opened up like a treasure chest, had been a good place to hide snacks and True Crime magazines; and the windowseat, dusty or not, had been a  _great_  place for a bored gradeschooler to kick back and ignore the rest of the world.  
  
And now it held one Hattori Heiji, Great Teenaged Detective Of The West, native to Osaka, mangler of proper Japanese and son of the feared 'Oni' Hattori Heizo. Who was, actually, quite busy contemplating life as he knew it.  
  
Sprawled across the window-seat, socked toes braced on the moulding edge that ran along where wall met bookcase, he rubbed a sneeze away from his nose with the pen he still held as he stared moodily out through the darkening evening down at Agasa's winter-brown lawn where a cold rain was beginning to soak the grass. Wadded-up balls of paper and several of his diminutive fellow detective's old magazines lay discarded on the seat beside him, faded red marker littering the pages where a juvenile Kudo had made corrections and rude comments. Heiji'd snickered his way from cover to cover when he'd found them, adding a few more here and there and violently disagreeing in scribbled diagrams with several. He’d needed the distraction. The Osakajin had a lot to think about and, while he’d been doing his best to steer around certain uncomfortable topics like a skier on a tree-bedecked hillside, he knew well enough that eventually they’d smack him right in the face if he didn’t deal with them sooner or later.  
  
Life As Hattori Heiji Saw It was, if you didn’t mind the analogy, comparable to a river and a really big dog. You could wander along the banks and sniff around for something interesting to roll in if the water was boring or too much of a bother to wade through; or you could watch the ducks swimming busily along the top about their own pursuits. If something disturbed the flow (even something hidden) it tended to become visible sooner or later, and then you could worry it and tug at it and drag it out by your teeth until it lay exposed on a sandbar; and if it was big and finny and had its own set of teeth, you could bark your head off at it until somebody paid attention—or charge at it yourself and let the fur fly.   
  
He rather liked doing the latter. It was  _fun,_  most of the time, especially if Kudo’d gotten his chibified self involved. Sometimes, though, you screwed up; and when you did, you got a mouthful of mud and you ended up blunting your teeth on the wrong damn thing. Mistakes were their own punishment.  
  
…and so was this.  
  
From among the litter of magazines and discards he fished out his latest effort, scanning over the scribbled kanji with a grimace:

> _1412, Great Phantom Thief Yada Yada, whatever you want to call yourself—_
> 
> _I don’t pretend to understand what kind of relationship you and Kudo’ve worked out, and I screwed up big time by trying to find out in an underhanded way. For that I apologize, much as I don’t want to. I’ve already said that to Kudo and Neechan, and now I’m saying the same thing to you. It was stupid and if I hadn’t been so damn worried I wouldn’t have pulled something like that—you played fair with us and I cheated, and I guess I deserve worse than I got._
> 
> _Kudo seems to think that this little detail’ll get taken care of by you sometime in my near future. Great. I remember some of your better pranks. Am I gonna need wading-boots or a gas-mask next time I go out in public? Whatever, bring it. But no more tricks from me, no more subterfuge or anything else. It’s not my style and if you’re worth half as much as Kudo seems to think, you don’t deserve it. So—anyway. I’m sorry._
> 
> _Kudo says he trusts you, says you’re worth a risk. I trust him. Just keep in mind: you ever give him reason to regret trusting you, not all the fancy disappearing tricks in the world’ll keep you safe from me. Okay? So long as we got that straight._
> 
> _Hattori Heiji_

  
  
It’d have to do. Seven tries were six too many, and Kudo said he could get the letter to the thief—Hattori wasn’t going to ask how, though he had a pretty good idea what with all the goddamn doves and things that’d been hanging around lately. He shifted restlessly on the dusty cushions, raising a small momentary cloud. Outside the rain was beginning to beat down harder, and he could see an umbrella-toting figure hurrying up the walk to Agasa’s gate—Ran, at a guess. Neechan was in a hurry tonight; probably missing Kudo, what with school and all. It was kind of cute, in an awful and really wrong way.   
  
Hattori folded the letter, stretching his long legs with a groan as he stood and headed towards the small library’s door and the stairs beyond. Behind him, faded magazines fluttered in his wake before folding back to stillness again.  
  
He'd reached the first floor landing and the doorway to the living room before he noticed the hushed voices and tense atmosphere in the room beyond. But Ai and Ran looked up when he came in, and Shinichi, following their lead, waved Hattori over.  
  
"Hey, Neechan. What's up, Kudo?"  
  
Shinichi, propped up in a swathe of blankets on the couch beside Ran, shook his head slowly. "Nothing's on fire, don't worry." Beside him, Ran snickered, and her arm - laid somewhat shyly across the seatback behind Shinichi's head - curled slightly closer to his shoulders.  
  
"Shinichi's not happy that you and he are going to have to leave the investigation," Ran explained. Shinichi shot her a look, which Ran returned without flinching. " _Are_ going to have to, not maybe," she repeated. "It's in Hattori's tousan's hands now."  
  
"I don't like leaving an investigation unfinished," Shinichi grumbled. "It doesn't feel right."  
  
"I do understand why this would bother you so much, Kudo-kun," Ai added soberly. Then she smirked and, utterly deadpan, continued: "You won't be able to do your ridiculous finger-pointing routine. Painful, I know."   
  
Shinichi puffed up in indignation. " _Haibara,_  you-- Oi, Ran, stoppit." Shinichi's attention swung from the little scientist to his girlfriend, who was smothering her laughter in one hand. On the other end of the sitting area, perched on one of the big armchairs, Hattori was snickering too. Shinichi looked from one to the other of them in frustration, puffing up much like small birds tended to when they were denied their food. "Hattori! Ran! You guys!"  
  
"Sorry, Shinichi, but it's just--" Ran dissolved into giggles, not that her explanation, had she finished it, would have done much to soothe her diminuitive friend. Shinichi crossed his arms petulantly, glaring at all and sundry.  
  
"You're all a bunch of jerks," he sulked. "I'm not talking to you."  
  
"Yes you are, Shini~chi," Ran giggled, leaning over to drop a kiss on the top of his head. Already reddish from frustration, Shinichi blushed scarlet at this, scowled deeply, and pulled his blanket up to cover his head and nose. Baleful blue eyes, absent of his Conan-glasses, glared out at the room from a small opening in the blanket.  
  
Settling down on the couch and propping his legs clear across the coffeetable, Heiji nudged the blanket-wrapped lump with a foot and grinned. "Looks cute, doesn't he? Like a little chibi-Yoda from  _Star Wars."_  Pitching his voice to a squeaky falsetto, he intoned: "Explainin' to you Only One Truth I will; the Force is STRONG with you, Young Tantei." Snagging the aforementioned glasses from beside his feet, he wedged them onto his face and plastered an eager, intense expression on his face that would have done justice to the most avid fanboy. Off went the hat; Heiji cleared his throat and held up a finger  _a lá Shinichi._  "ONE," he intoned, still squeaking. "Of the culprit's motives, greed and anger they were-- lead you to the Dark Side they will! TWO--" (a second finger joined the first, spearing the air) "--his methods elaborate an' sneaky were-- fearful of the law he should be! Duct-tape, a live armadillo, two plant-pots anna piece of string he used! Mmmmmm _hmmMMMmm,_  so he did!"  
  
By now Ran was convulsed in laughter, gasping and holding her sides; next to her the blanketed detective was frozen in an attitude of complete and total rejection. **"!!!!!"**  
  
"THREE! Colonel Mustard-han in the library it was! With the candlestick! Only One Truth there is! Let the Wookie win!"  
  
Blue eyes glared in outrage from beneath the folds of blanket. "Oh. My. God. Hattori, I'm going to have to  **kill**  you now. With the candlestick."  
  
"Y'can hide my body in a frozen cow," suggested his fellow detective cheerfully, dropping the squeakiness. "They'll never find it there."  
  
"Funny," Shinichi grumbled, "You might actually have a point. What kind of odds is there for us finding this in the first place? It must be the devil's own luck that dropped those cows in front of us."  
  
"Devil's own?" Hattori snorted. "Like I toldja, I'm used to bodies getting dropped on me, but it's you who's the magnet for freak incidents. I don't think we coulda duplicated this case if we worked together t'try to." The detective raked one hand through his hair; when he replaced his hat over that, it was with the bill forward. "I get a headache just talkin' about it, honestly, but I wanna see this through. Problem is..." Hattori sighed. "I'm no cop. No Inspector. An' you're a kid, as far as the world's concerned. I mean, hell...I can't even go hand off our info to my dad for fear they're gonna whack me t'distract him from the case."  
  
"We're all liabilities to him now," Ran murmured. She shifted one hand carefully toward the general area of Shinchi's lap; he raised one hand under the blanket and grasped it lightly.  
  
"It's okay, Ran." The boy sounded tired, but within his tone of resignation, there was calmness. "There's other things we can do, besides just chasing the case. Hattori-san will follow Hoshi Gyūniku to its rotten core. We can take care of the smaller things for now." A silence followed this, which Shinichi broke with a soft nod.  
  
"I'll call Ayumi."  
  
* * *  
  
The call (fielded by Ayumi's mother and passed along with a gentle chide that it was 'almost bedtime for you both, don't stay on too long') wasn't very long; Shinichi didn't really have the option of telling the little girl bluntly that the person their classmate had asked them to find had been murdered, dismembered and probably sold in bits via the black market. That kind of horror wasn't for a gradeschooler, no matter how bright or experienced. So he put on his best Conan-voice and just asked her to show up after school with the others-- he'd gotten some information, and no, he'd rather tell them when he saw them.  
  
So he had a reprieve 'til the next afternoon; curled up on the couch with his blanket tucked back around him and Ran comfortably warm against his left side, Shinichi half-watched the old black-and-white foreign movie that Heiji'd dredged up from somewhere and dozed. His sleepy thoughts circled around, pinging like half-hearted pinballs on one concern or another as they followed the slope down towards true sleep: the anonymous victims in the cows case, the not-so-anonymous Japanese businessman, the attempts on his and Hattori's lives, the discoveries that had followed... and the irksome knowledge that yes, this time they couldn't follow it through to its end.  
  
He hated it. But it was logical, and if there was a sharp delineation between what his instincts said he  _ought_  to be doing and what he  _could_  do, then... logic won out. That was kind of the point in detective work, wasn't it? Logic ruled the roost.  
  
 _Of course,_  Shinichi thought drowsily as on the TV Humphrey Bogart drawled in subtitled English about gin-joints and meetings,  _if that was always true, I wouldn't know Kid. Life'd be simpler, but... I wouldn't trade for that, not for a second. 'Simple' is over-rated.  
  
Wonder what he's doing tonight?_ It was on that thought, accompanied by the notes of Sam's gentle piano, that Shinichi drifted asleep...  
  
...and it was a hard, angry rapping on the door that brought him very unceremoniously awake. Beside him, Ran had tensed up; Hattori snorted awake in the chair to their right, twisting around to glare at the door. "Whassat?"  
  
"It's midnight," Ran said nervously, drawing her arm tighter around Shinichi. "Nobody should be bothering us at this hour."  
  
The knocking repeated, harder this time; Agasa's sturdy front door rattled in its frame and Ran's breath caught in her throat. "Shinichi--"  
  
"Hide, Ran." The boy in her arms was already pushing free. As Hattori vaulted out of his chair, edging toward the entryway with his guard fully raised, Shinichi snatched up his watch, fastening it without a second thought, and darted forward to the genkan to retrieve one of his shoes. He was already slipping it on as Hattori, a heavy cane in one hand, reached hesitantly forward and threw the door bolt open. And as it opened, before he could even draw his hand back, the bamboo spine of a handheld fan rapped sharply down on his wrist. Hattori yanked it back, cussing, as the door swung fully open. Shinichi stood, his single sneaker throwing sparks across Agasa's floorboards, watch raised, opened, and levelled at the throat of the intruders.  
  
The moment stretched, all of them staring down the others. When it broke, it was with the polite, dulcet greeting of the middle-aged woman framed in Agasa's doorway.  
  
"Konban wa."  
  
Hattori all but fell over, and Shinichi did, sinking down to the floorboards with a thud. Ran rushed out from behind the couch to gather him into her arms, staring in confusion at a perfectly poised, beautifully attired Hattori Shizuka -- who was staring expectantly, one eyebrow raised, at her son.  
  
"K-kaasan?" Hattori managed. "What are you--?"  
  
"Don't forget about  _meeee_ , Hei~ji!" Toyama Kazuha peeked head and shoulders out from behind of Shizuka, a threatening scowl across her features. "You think you can just run  _away_  for two weeks and not even  _call_  me even  _once_?" She stomped toward Hattori, arms akimbo; the Osakajin detective scampered quickly away from her, until Agasa's living room chair stopped his retreat. Kazuha - completely forgetting to even take her shoes off - kept going after him until they were chest-to-chest, Hattori trying to squirm away as Kazuha attacked, scolding finger and tongue wagging.  
  
"I can't believe you! And you didn't even let me know you were  _attacked,_  I found out from the  _ **television**_ , and your poor kaasan and I were so--"  
  
Nearer the doorway, Shinichi turned a wary eye on Shizuka from within Ran's embrace. "W-what're you doing here, Obaasan?"  
  
"It has come to my attention that my son is no longer safe in Mouri-tantei's company. Toyama-kun and I have come to retrieve him. Oh, good evening, Mouri-kun."  
  
"K-konban wa, Hattori-san," Ran managed, adjusting Shinichi in her arms. With a whispered apology to him, she stood, carrying him like the sick child he appeared to be. "You should have called ahead. You terrified us."  
  
"It was not my intent. I apologize," Shizuka said, nodding softly. "Are Hei-kun's things all here?"  
  
"No, he was staying in Tousan's room," Ran answered. "Should...I get his things?"  
  
"We can pick them up on our way back," Shizuka answered practically, stepping into the living room with a measuring glance.   
  
Ran looked around with her, cautious. The television was just playing the movie's end credits, and other than that, there didn't seem to be anything incriminating about the situation. Or at least she hoped there wasn't - Shizuka was a very smart woman, and she didn't need any extra help in guessing Shinichi's secret; she was already more than well equipped to do so, if her imagination led her in that direction. Searching for a change of topic, Ran was saved by the introduction of a sleepy, cautious Agasa to the scene.  
  
"Ran-chan? Hattori-kun? What's going on here?"  
  
"Professor, this's my kaasan," Hattori managed, trying to twist free of Kazuha's attention. The determined girl simply grabbed the his collar and yanked him back again, growling.  
  
"Don't you try to get out of this, Heiji, you're in  _so much trouble,_  and your kaasan and I drove  _all day_  to get here, and you're not gonna go  _ANYWHERE_  without me for a long time, and you just  _wait_  til I tell--"  
  
"I would be surprised if he went anywhere at all for a while, with or without escort," Shizuka commented lightly. Her words didn't have to carry much volume - they still had their intended effect, and Hattori shivered involuntarily. "I suspect he'll be a good son and stay close to his poor old mother for quite some time, after this. After all," Shizuka continued, her tone of voice cooler than the concern that was hidden under her words, "He  _did_  get himself nearly killed twice in a row. I don't imagine he's thought much about how deeply worried he's made his dear kaasan for these last two weeks."  
  
Hattori didn't so much wince as shrivel away from his mother's gaze at that, guilt pressing on him like a raincloud. "I'll get my things," he muttered, beginning to shuffle away. Kazuha pawed at his elbow. "Wait, Hattori, I'll come help."  
  
"No you won't," he countered, turning around to put one finger against her forehead and push back lightly. "You're still in your street shoes." Kazuha looked down, yelped, and skittered back into the genkan with a blush across her face.  
  
"Sorry, hakase!" She bowed in Agasa's direction, ponytail flipping forward.  
  
"It's alright," the scientist stammered, waving his hand to mollify her. "Ran-chan can help Hattori-kun get his things together."  
  
"Back here, Hattori-kun," Ran interjected, already halfway through the living room toward the doorway in the back side wall. Hattori trotted after her, waving impatiently at Kazuha to dissuade her following him.   
  
"We'll be right back, Kazuha, kaasan."  
  
The door of the small room snapped shut behind Hattori, Ran, and Conan - still carried in Ran's arms - and left Professor Agasa, Kazuha, and Hattori Shizuka alone in the genkan of the house. The Professor shuffled one foot, clearing his throat awkwardly in the face of Shizuka's level, exceedingly unimpressed stare.  
  
"Ahm, well, then."  
  
* * *  
  
" _Hattori,_  what were you thinking? Ran, put me down."  
  
"Shinichi, you're too weak. Sit here."  
  
"Dammit, Ran.  _Hattori!_ "  
  
"I know, I know. I kept meanin' to check in with 'em and then I'd just think of okaa's face and  _euuugh,_  I just didn't wanna deal with that."  
  
" _This is better?_ " Hattori winced.  
  
"Yea, yea, yea. Just...gimme something to do so we keep makin' noise in here."  
  
The three teens - shrunken or no - bustled around in the small room, making just enough noise to believably mask their hushed, hissing conversation.  
  
"Hattori-kun, are you going to be okay? What if they try to attack you while you're traveling...?" Ran pressed her lips together tight, resisting the urge to worry one between her teeth.  
  
"If kaasan and Kazuha got here okay, I think we can get back okay," Hattori grumbled, collecting a couple pens and a notepad from Shinichi's bedside table. "'Sides, it's easier to go by car than train. More options."  
  
"You let me  _know_  if anything happens, Heiji," Shinichi demanded, young voice deeper with gravity. "I don't like this."  
  
"Leavin' in the middle of the night? No warning? This's how they always do it in chase flicks," Hattori laughed quietly. "I'll be okay, Kudo. Just..." He pulled a thin, folded piece of paper - a letter - from his pocket. "You know where t'send this."  
  
Shinichi nodded. "I'll take care of it."  
  
Hattori stood back from the pair of them - Ran standing beside Shinichi's bed, and the boy in a half-crouch on the foot end of the bed, clearly fighting his own will to allow Hattori to leave. The Osakan detective nodded and pulled his hat on, bill forwards. "G'night."  
  
"Goodnight, Hattori," Ran said softly, smiling a little. "Make sure to make up with Kazuha, okay?"  
  
Hattori grinned through a wince. "Y'always ask the hard stuff, Neechan."  
  
" _HEIJI!_ "  
  
All three in the small medical room winced. "Comin', Kazuha, keep your shirt on," Hattori yelled over his shoulder, then turned back to his friends for another moment. "You stay safe. Nothin' stupid, okay?"  
  
Shinichi just smirked. "Says  _you_."  
  
With a snicker, Hattori ducked out the door, shutting it carefully behind him; the rattle of Kazuha latching onto him as soon as he was within range and the polite, firm murmur of his mother's voice played counterpoint to each other and to Agasa's parting well-wishes. Once the front door had shut behind them, much more gently than it had been opened, and the audible  _beep beep bip_  of the Professor resetting his alarms assured them that Hattori Shizuka and Kazuha were  _not_  coming back in, Shinichi and Ran both let out a big breath and looked at each other.  
  
"So  _now_  what?"  
  
* * *  
  
'Now what'.... was, according to pretty much everybody else concerned, not a whole hell of a lot.  
  
The case was in other (admittedly capable) hands and under control. Heiji was  _also_  in a similar situation, like it or not; and so long as none of the perpetrators managed to get in a potshot or tried vehicular homicide again, he and Shinichi were pretty much settled. And that was that.  
  
Which didn't bode well for either one's temper, of course, or their frustration levels. Emails full of the latter flew back and forth with alarming frequency before the two detectives accepted their fate on the sidelines, and if said fate was a bitter pill to swallow, well-- Shinichi, at least, had some experience in that area. Not that he liked it, of course. He'd talked to Ayumi and the other kids, explaining as gently as possible that their case was now in the hands of the police; they'd been upset. Perhaps it was the lingering frustration left over from that talk that finally pushed the boy past his limits and led him to consider something that, admittedly, was not the best of ideas. As it was, it was less than three days after Hattori Heiji had been forcibly removed from Professor Agasa's residence that Shinichi's patience-- and his resolve to be a good little convalescent and behave-- at last broke.   
  
The digital clock at his bedside had blinked the eleventh hour at him some time earlier; he hadn't been able to sleep, he'd had a surfeit of rest and was thoroughly, completely, utterly  _sick_  of the walls around him, his bed, the medications that Haibara and Agasa'd been requiring him to take and pretty much everything, including his own boredom and the restless funk that comes with being halfway healed but not quite there.  
  
This hadn't escaped his friends' notice, of course.   
  
After even  _Ayumi_  had pronounced Shinichi as 'acting like a big baby, why do boys DO that, Ran-neechan?' and Ran herself had given up lifting Shinichi's bad mood in disgust, he'd been left to sulk it off in his room. Ai had, oddly enough, given him a faintly approving look; he rather suspected that the influx of extra bodies in Agasa's normally-quiet house had been cramping her style and that she was ready to see them out the door, pronto.  
  
 _Well, fine. I'm sick and tired of playing guinea-pig anyway, and she keeps looking at me like I'm some sort of experiment that's about to reach critical mass,_  he groused to himself as he slipped out of bed and listened at his door. Ran had gone home earlier, Agasa'd headed for bed, Ai'd vanished into the basement and all was silent. Still. Peaceful.  
  
Perfect.  
  
Because if he didn't get out of there really really soon he was going to go completely, utterly, certifiably bugnuts, and not in an entertainingly Kid-like way either.  _And speaking of which..._  Shinichi tugged his warmest bathrobe tight around him and eased himself soundlessly through the door and in the direction of the tunnel leading from the Professor's house to the Kudo estate.  _...speaking of which, I wonder what he's up to? Maybe if I emailed him we could, dunno, have lunch again or something. I'd-- kind of like to see him. No cases, nothing to work on, I've read and RE-read my stash of books, I'm developing a damned Playstation callus on my thumbs and I. Want. OUT. Even gradeschool's looking good right now, which means there's either something severely wrong with my psyche or my brain's going the way of my body._  
  
Hence tonight's little field-trip.  
  
And besides which, Shinichi was feeling a lot better anyway.  _Yes,_  there were still the weird shooting pains in his largest joints and  _yes,_  Haibara and the Professor were concerned about them and the way his white-cell count was still bouncing like a rubber ball all over his physiological landscape; but he had a lot more energy now and he hadn't run a fever in nearly a week. He probably needed the exercise.  
  
The tunnel's uneven flooring radiated cold right up through the soles of his house-scuffs. Shivering a little, lightweight footsteps padding softly along through the dark, Shinichi pressed the latch that opened the concealed entrance to his family's home... and paused as a faint wave of dizziness swept over him, dredging a memory out of somewhere deep: icy roughness beneath his cheek, someone swearing softly as he was gathered up and carried, bitingly-chill draft moving past fever-warm skin--  
  
 _I never did thank Kid for bringing me back._  Shinichi pressed the hidden latch and the door swung open.  _Got to remember to do that next time I see him._  
  
A sudden, sharp pain in his left knee and hip made him stumble as the warmer air of his home gusted across the boy's face, carrying scents of books, dust and the ghosts of coffee; he hissed, massaging the offending joints as the door closed behind him.  _Coffee; not a bad idea. So it keeps me up? I'm already up and I don't feel like sleeping anyway._  Fifteen minutes later the Krups was gurgling through a filter, the house's air had taken on a much friendlier scent, and Shinichi was ensconced on the couch with a stack of fresh reading material and a steaming mug. It had amused him to find several new additions to the kitchen: two open bags of coffee in the freezer (Mundo Novo Arabica and something esoteric called 'Pixcaya Huehuetenango'), a bag of chips of a brand he didn't recognize and a brand-new container of green tea ice-cream. The formerly dusty sink was scrubbed and the washcloths hanging neatly over the faucet; peering over the edge of the counter, the boy had thought about elves and grinned to himself as he'd poured the coffee and settled down, wrapped in a rather ratty couch-throw, to entertain himself.  
  
But--  
  
Despite the caffeine, the comfort and warmth of his home ground and the novelty of a bit of excercise had their eventual effect. Eyes slowly drooped and slid closed, Shinichi's copy of [Judge Dee At Work](http://www.amazon.com/Judge-Dee-Work-Detective-Mysteries/dp/0226848663/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264539237&sr=8-1) slipped through his fingers and onto the floor, and he slept.  
  
*  
  
Sunlight was filtering through the blinds when he awoke, prying at his eyelids with gleaming golden fingers. Shinichi stirred, blinking sleepily at the windows.  _...Shit, did I-- I've been here all night? The Professor and Ai are gonna kill me--_  
  
And he turned his head and saw the gun.  
  
 _"H-Haibara?"_  he whispered, staring in shock past the black mouth of the barrel at her face. She was eerily calm, her blue-gray eyes faintly smiling.  
  
"I'm sorry," she said softly. "It seems that my past cruelty is still a part of me." As Shinichi stared blankly, mouthing  _What?_  she shook her head, that unblinking gaze unwavering. "Don't you understand? They've found me. Yes, the men in black, my former coworkers; they've found me. Don't you remember, Shinichi? That case in Haido City, at the hotel?"  
  
He did. Horror froze his limbs, stilled any incipient movement where he lay; a sharp jolt of agony spiked through him, radiating from the heart outwards. That had been the one with the Black Organization member, the one she'd called Pisco--  
  
"I never thought there could be another agent there," said Haibara Ai--  _Sherry--_  softly. "Never in my wildest nightmares. But there was, and they worked out that I shrank, and this morning they found me." She breathed out, barely a sigh; the barrel of the gun never moved. And still she smiled. It was the kind of smile that accompanied madness and despair like a friend, following them through the depths and emerging on the other side where there was nothing left but the calm of still, still waters.  
  
"I thought they'd kill me, you see. But they want me back, Shinichi; they want me to finish the research, develop the Apotoxin, pick up where I and Pisco left off."  
  
"...and you came to kill me? Because I know about the Organization?" he whispered, pulse racing.  _Ai, no. No please. Don't betray me, don't don't don't, not after all this, not me not Ran not everyone, Ai please_ _ **no--**_  Pain again, ripping at his breathing, worse than before.  
  
"Of course," Sherry said rationally, horrifically complacent at his understanding. "They know about you. It was a condition of my return. And... the others..." (her steady, dead gaze never left his) "...your parents, your friends, Hattori... they'll all be taken care of tomorrow. But," she offered as if in consolation, "I can save the Professor, you know. They're holding him hostage. It's all I can do."  
  
 _But you can't do anything. You're helpless. I'm sorry. It's all I can do. It's all I can do. It's all I can do and you can't do_ _ **anything**_ _\--_  
  
"You should thank me, you know. You'll be first, Shinichi; you won't see them when they die."  
  
Her finger tightened on the trigger--  
  
 _and the gunshot was lost in the roaring in his ears as he tried to move tried to move tried to move tried to move tried to_  
  
\--and fell out of the dream and off of the couch in a tangle of bathrobe and book and blanket.  
  
There were no blinds, no sunlight, no Ai. Just quiet, and agony.  
  
On his hands and knees on the floor, Shinichi couldn't even gasp. The pain took his breath away as thoroughly as a blow to the chest. His ribcage seemed to crumple inwards, lungs stabbed with shards of bone or pain, it didn't matter which; bile rose in his throat as he convulsed around his core, biting his lip to keep from biting his tongue. Within seconds, the pain had doubled, and a few moments later it doubled again; Shinichi's eyes rolled back as he passed out, his body conceding quick, overwhelmed victory to the panic of his searing nerves and muscles.  
  
* * *  
  
When he woke again, eyelashes crusted to his cheeks and throat raw, the first thing he noticed - beside the fact that he was still in pain - was how cold it was. The blanket, where was the blanket -- with shaking hands, Shinichi groped blindly about for the soft, warm cloth. When his fingertips finally brushed against it, at the extent of his arm's reach, Shinichi pushed off the floor with his other hand, leaning toward his goal in order to grasp it.  
  
Around then, he noticed the height issue.  
  
Dragging the blanket quickly back to himself, Shinichi freed one hand and rubbed his eyes open. The first thing he saw was his big knobby knees, followed by his hand -- his broad, strong, teenager's hand. His heart leapt so hard that he  _felt_  the impact when it slammed into his ribcage, then ricocheted somewhere in the direction of his collarbones.  
  
 _Flashbacks,_  he thought, stunned.  _Heiji and Ai said something about flashbacks...relapses...oh, god._  Shaky though he was, the detective pushed himself to his knees, then gained his feet, wobbling only slightly on legs that felt like stilts. He glanced around the room, taking in the situation. It was still dark outside; this transformation must have been much quicker than the last. Room dimly lit, book there, bathrobe over there, one arm torn. House still smelled strongly of coffee, was warmer than before, and there was a soft buzz in the background, but it didn't sound important.  _God, I have to get back. I have to tell Ra--_  
  
In the hallway between the kitchen and the library, which was lit quite a lot more than it had been when Shinichi fell asleep as Conan only a few hours before, Shinichi skidded to a stop, his face an open book of shock, and stared down the day's  _third_  unexpected - and complicated - visitor. No, make that third  _and fourth;_  the second of the pair was coming out of the kitchen even as Shinichi and the first stared at each other in confusion (on her part), consternation (on his), and shock (on both parts).  
  
"Shinichi, darling, do you want to borrow one of your father's bathrobes?" Kudo Yukiko was the first to collect herself, smiling sweetly at her inexplicably grown-up-again son. "I don't want you to catch a chill like that."  
  
Shinichi looked at his mother, looked past her shoulder at his rather bemused-looking father, then down at himself.  _Well, if your bathrobe's over_ _there_ _, and you're over_ _here,_ _it only makes sense._  Shinichi scowled darkly at that logical corner of his brain, which sounded distressingly similar to the voice of a certain thief he knew, and darted up the staircase toward the bedrooms and clothing.  
  
In the hallway, Yukiko turned to watch her son leave, leaning against her husband at her back.  
  
"You know, he looks just like you did when you were that age," she commented fondly, her voice caught somewhere between an appreciative woman's and an approving mother's. "...But he gets his cute little tush from me."  
  
*  
  
  



End file.
